(New Delhi-March 2019 Corporate chief diversity officers, activists, curious travelers, and thought leaders from the United Kingdom, United States, and India are converging on New Delhi the first week of March 2019 for SarisToSuits charitable foundation’s inaugural trip to India, focused on women’s empowerment. The inaugural trip coincides with International Women’s Day and global diversity/inclusion conference in New Delhi on March 3 at The LaLit Hotel, hosted by SarisToSuits founder and journalist Patti Tripathi, formerly of CNN.
SarisToSuits celebrates Women FIRST in Atlanta
In 2018, SarisToSuits held its six-year anniversary “Women FIRST” celebration in Atlanta featuring many notable champions of women’s advocacy. Indian-American Richard Verma, former U.S. Ambassador to India, was among the speakers and encouraged attendees to break the silence when it comes to women’s marginalization.
Verma referred to Tripathi as a pathbreaker and trailblazer: “At the time I met her, she was doing something no other Indian American or South Asian was doing [headlining for CNN]… She was this incredible role model who was committed to helping other people and very courageous.”
Global Unity in Diversity conference advocates women empowerment
Taking SarisToSuits on the road, Tripathi builds on that momentum and the immediacy of the #MeToo movement with the Empowerment India 2019 travel experiences. Collaboration for the inaugural event is invited from thought leaders, academics, activists, and women trailblazers from around the globe so this can become an annual trip to the Asia Pacific region.
“Your SarisToSuits program is one of the most comprehensive that I have seen in my two decades in the diversity and inclusion global arena,” said Bettina Alejandra Deynes, Senior Managing Partner at The Surrogate CEO. “Your dedication to the presentation of a wide range of speakers and topics, while providing a once-in-a-lifetime experience for participants, is to be applauded.”
Participants can choose from five itinerary options during their stay, ranging from two to 13 days in India, and among various architectural and advocacy-related highlights. Global travelers can choose the five-day New Delhi stay, or the entire Empowerment India 2019 stay at five-star accommodations. See www.SarisToSuits.org for more information.
Notable Speakers and Panelists at Empowerment India 2019
In addition to enriching tourist opportunities, each of the trip itineraries includes participation in a conference entitled Global Unity in Diversity, held in New Delhi which covers a wide range of topics with an incredible slate of speakers and panelists. The keynote address for Global Unity in Diversity will be given by Vinita Bali, a high-powered corporate strategist formerly of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, who was Managing Director of India’s Britannia Industries. She serves on many boards. Within six years under Bali’s leadership, Britannia’s profits tripled; its brands are sold in more than 60 countries worldwide and the company is estimated to hold a 38 percent market share. Bali was named India’s Economic Times’ Business Woman of the Year in 2009, the same year that she founded the Britannia Nutrition Foundation to reduce incidences of malnutrition for school children in India. In 2011, Bali landed the #18 spot on Forbes’ “Asia’s 50 Power Businesswomen” list.
The conference will include remarks by Abha Singh, a Mumbai-based attorney and gender justice advocate who champions women’s safety in the workplace. Also speaking will be the parents of Jyoti Singh, who was gang raped on a New Delhi bus in 2012 in an act that shocked the world and led to international condemnation – It was also the year SarisToSuits launched in the US. Many other notables from the US such as Dr. NainaMD Beverley Hills and Genvieve Laveille from the UK, and criminologist/attorney Anooja Kapur will be speaking at the event.
India-born and Indiana raised SarisToSuits founder Sarasota resident Patti Tripathi empowers women
Tripathi regularly read news headlines on television involving India and the treatment of women and girls. India was named among the world’s least safe countries for women to live in, accounting for half of the world’s female digital gender divide. Recently a study in a respected journal noted that one third of suicides in the world are committed by Indian women. Daughters in some communities are a burden, a family liability because dowries, illegal yet still practiced, have a reach all the way to the womb.
“We cannot focus on depressing statistics,” Tripathi insists. “There’s a strong case for positive intervention. Women need a voice to advocate for themselves or to change their circumstances.”
As a child prodigy, Tripathi’s father was the first in that part of the world chosen as both a Commonwealth Scholar (as a physicist) and as a Senior Academic Staff Fello which led to the family’s emigration to the UK when Patti was not even ten years old and eventually to the United States. At 75 years old, Dr. Tripathi University still works as a senior scientist at the Radiation Research Lab at the University of Notre Dame. Though born in a rural region of India, Tripathi herself received an excellent education and was able to achieve her American dream of being a broadcast journalist—never before had there been an India-born national news anchor when she was hired by CNN International, CNNRadio and Headline News in 1996.
SarisToSuits was born out of Tripathi’s empathy and irrepressible drive to persist. The charity features an annual calendar of India-born women—not just models but role models who “pose for a purpose.” Each of the women has beaten the odds and claimed her own voice through education and empowerment and is part of a growing global network of advocates for the
The first thing one can do, Verma noted, is to support organizations like Saris to Suits. “It doesn’t require writing a big check. What it requires is a little bit of time, commitment, using your place of power and you all have it. You don’t have to be a senator or a governor.”
SarisToSuits seeks collaboration for Corporate Social Responsibility and NGOs to display their products under Empowerment India 2019. Title and corporate sponsorships are still available; please contact: www.SarisToSuits.org, or Info@SarisToSuits.org.