About the Conference:
The goal of Alibaba’s inaugural Global Conference on Women and Entrepreneurship is to jump-start a conversation among women in China on empowerment and personal fulfillment as entrepreneurs, as leaders, as policy-makers, and as role models for future generations. A distinguished roster of international speakers, including several Alibaba executives, will discuss ideas and initiatives to inspire women in China, and around the world, to pursue their dreams and design their own futures.
Speakers will include female executives, academics, entrepreneurs and thought leaders from across industries and around the world. They will address over 500 hundred women leaders and executives from the fields of politics, business, finance, technology, fashion and media – women who are driving the conversation at their respective organizations, as the influencers of current and future generations of women across China.
The importance of women to Alibaba
Alibaba is driven by its mission to “make it easy to do business anywhere” and by anyone, female or male. Alibaba fights for the little guy, which includes women that have historically faced disadvantages in the workplace and business environment.
- The Internet has helped to equalize the playing field, enabling women to create and pursue opportunities to succeed and flourish in their own right through the Alibaba ecosystem.
- More than half of the sellers on Taobao (our C2C marketplace) are female.
- The greater proportion of storefronts with higher positive user ratings are owned by women.
- More than half of the microloans distributed by Alibaba-affiliated Ant Financial go to women, and females qualify for these microloans for their businesses more quickly than men.
- In partnership with the International Finance Corporation, Ant Financial launched China’s first internet-based gender-finance program in January 2015 to expand financing for women small-business owners and entrepreneurs within the Alibaba ecosystem.
- Women are well represented within Alibaba – not just within our employee base, but all the way up to senior management.
- 40% of our employees are female.
- Of our 18 founders, sixare women. Many have grown with the company to take on senior management/leadership roles today.
- Nearly 35% of management are female, and 26% of senior management are female.
- Alibaba Group’s Chief Financial Officer (Maggie Wu), Chief Customer Officer (Trudy Dai), Chief People Officer (Lucy Peng), the President of Alibaba.com (Wu Mingzhi) and the President of China Smart Logistics (Judy Tong) are all female.
- Nineout of 30 (nearly 30%) of the Alibaba Lakeside Partners are women.
Alibaba executives participating in the conference include:
- Jack Ma, Executive Chairman, Alibaba Group
- Lucy Peng, Chief People Officer, Alibaba Group, Chief Executive Officer, Ant Financial Services Group
- Maggie Wu, Chief Financial Officer, Alibaba Group
- Zhang Wei, Senior Vice President, Alibaba Group
- Shi Dongwei, Vice President, Alibaba Group
Additional day one speakers include:
- Keynote by Arianna Huffington, Chair, President, and Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post Media Group
- Barbara Woodward, Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China
- Jessica Alba, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, The Honest Company
- Vicki Zhao, Actress, Singer and Director
- Jean Liu, President, DiDi Dache
- Su Mang, Editor-in-Chief, Harper’s Bazaar China; President of Trends Media Group
- Julie Deane, Founder, Cambridge Satchel Company
- Tian Wei, Anchor, CCTV
- Jacqueline Reses, Chief Development Officer, Yahoo!
- T. Kyle Vanderlick, Dean, the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Yale University; Thomas E. Golden, Jr. Professor of Engineering
- Melanie Walker, Senior Adviser to the President and Director of the President’s Delivery Unit, The World Bank
Additional day two speakers include:
- Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director, UN Women
- Mark Schwartz, Vice Chairman, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.; Chairman, Goldman Sachs Asia Pacific
- Sheila Marcelo, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Care.com
- YANG Bin, Vice President and Provost of Tsinghua University; Dean of Graduate School
- LENG Yuqing, Founder, Chengdu Yitao Trade Co., Ltd; 10,000 Women scholar
- Shawn Covell, Vice President, Qualcomm
- Carol Yost, Senior Director, The Asia Foundation
- Radhika Shroff, Vice President and Senior Investment Officer, Accion International
- Alfred Hannig, Executive Director, Alliance for Financial Inclusion
- LIU Dongwen, General Manager of CFPA Microfinance; Deputy Executive Director of CFPA
- YU Shengfa, Vice President, Ant Financial Services Group
- LU His-Peng, Distinguished Professor, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
- WANG Xiao, Editor-in-Chief, Cosmopolitan
- WANG Jing, Co-founder, Beijing Toread Outdoor Products Co., Ltd.
- WANG Mei, Founder, Taover.com
- WU Fangfang, Chief Executive Officer, Greenbox
- TU Wenhong, Founder, O.C.T.MAMI
- HE Ningning, Tao Model; Initiator of the ‘Xingyuan’ Charity Program
