Photo credit: Gettyimages/Paul Morigi
“I think after watching some of the primary debates of the presidential candidates, I learned you can say a lot of nonsense and get away with it,” said Gerrit Ruetzel, CEO and President for Hugo Boss of the Americas, “and it is my true honor to co-host this event tonight for the second time with Elle Magazine. Maybe some of you remember me from last year. I was very nervous because yes, it’s part of my job to speak in public, but the caliber of people in this room is literally breathtaking, so I always have to compose myself a little bit.” We’d be nervous too if most of the guests were wearing five inch spiked heels!
ELLE Editor-in-Chief Robbie Myers and Gerrit Ruetzel
“We embrace the opportunity to celebrate women in power, women in Washington,” he added. “You have and will continue to shape the political life in this country…….and serve as an inspiration to everyone and certainly to the next generation of women in the United States. We all agree that gender equality is an important driver not just behind economics, but also the overall growth of our industries, our nations, and our cultures. Education is the most important part, and it determines to a large extent your future career. Hugo Boss is currently working on a philanthropic program which is addressing the education of underprivileged or children coming from underprivileged communities. We’re still at the very beginning, because we don’t take this easily and lightheartedly. We really want to pull something off that’s meaningful, and I hope when I’m coming back next year, and I’m very determined and hopeful that Robbie is gonna invite us again, that I can share with you what we have done to improve the education for these children. And as much as it is important to host events like this one tonight, we really want to start with the kids, with the children, and provide them with the opportunity to have a career like most of you here in this room.”
Honorees Gabrielle Giffords, Janet Murguia, Cecile Richards, Jean Case, Kristen Soltis Anderson, Lisa Monaco, ELLE’s Robbie Myers, Gina Adams, and Karen Dunn
“You know what? It’s interesting because so many women who have come up to me tonight have said ‘I love this event, it’s my favorite event.’ And I tell people ‘It’s just a dinner, it’s just dinner.’ I mean basically when I get through this, programming will be over.” For anyone that traverses the social terrain in Washington, those words were music to the ears. “There will be no debates, and there is no fake panel or anything, it’s really just about all of you. So you know our purpose for being here is to cross-pollinate the powerful women in a given industry starting twenty years ago as an off-the-record event when a film editor looked around the industry, Hollywood, and asked ‘Where are the women with any power at all?’ We look for women at other places too, like tech, art, Washington D.C. And as long as the President, the Vice President, Speaker of the House, President Pro-temp, the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense are all men, and you have to go down seven layers on the succession plane to get to a women, we will continue to do so.”
Richard Stengel, Robbie Myers, and honoree Lisa Monaco
“Because I live in New York and everything I learn I learn from a cab driver, I’ll tell you this while I have the time. A young man, my cab driver from Rwanda, and I were discussing the election, and whether America would after all elect a female president. And he said to me, ‘Have you ever heard of the Hutu and the Tutsis?’ and I said ‘yes.’ And he said ‘They were at war forever in my country, but things are calm now … do you know why?’ and I said ‘no, why?’. He said ‘Because even though a man is in charge at the top, for the first time we have more women in parliament. They made peace.’ And it’s true, women have one 63.8% of seats in the lower house of parliament in Rwanda. So then, what is going to happen is we’re going to elect a lot more women and we’ll run the world, and they’ll make peace in Rwanda, and maybe in Washington D.C. Ironically, the reason we’re here is to talk about the amazing women we honor tonight and I’d like to do that. It’s really an amazing night to be here with the recent supreme court nomination, and for us, from New York, to get to be here with you. I know it’s an incredibly exciting time. Meyers went on to acknowledge each candidate and their accomplishments which can be found in ELLE’s recent issue.
The sprinkling of men at the dinner included Steve Clemons, Ambassador Peter Selfridge, Senator Corey Booker, Marc Adelman, Eugene Adams and Nick Schmit.
Amb. Selfridge, Kathleen Biden, Nick Schmit
The celebration of the magazine’s sixth annual Women in Washington Power List was a private dinner at the Kreeger Museum in Washington, DC.
This year’s honorees—featured in the April issue of ELLE—included Gina Adams, Senior Vice President for Government Affairs at FedEx; Jean Case, CEO of the Case Foundation; Karen Dunn, partner at Boies, Schiller & Flexner; Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Founder of Americans for Responsible Solutions and former U.S. Representative for Arizona’s 8th District; U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, U.S. Representative for Washington’s 5th District; Lisa Monaco, U.S. Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor; Janet Murguía, President of the National Council of La Raza; Cecile Richards, President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America; and Kristen Soltis Anderson, pollster, pundit, and author of The Selfie Vote.
