Name: Watch Dayle Haddon Speak at Fortune’s MPW Summit
Uploaded: 2016-10-19
Duration: 12 min 20 s
Description: Dayle Haddon sat down with Maggie Gray

[ MUSIC ] WE should probably start with our connection which is Sports Illustrated. I'm a reporter for SI, my name's Maggie Gray. I will not be on the cover of the swimsuit issue any time soon. Neither will I. Dale was on the cover of the swimsuit issue in 1973 and we have a photo of Dale on the cover. I think you guys will be able to see it. [ LAUGH ] Do you believe it? Right. [ LAUGH ] Now- I couldn't do it today. I'm sorry. When you see this photo what do you think of? You know I just think it's another girl. When you've lived as long as I have, I'm a mother and a grandmother, four grandchildren, you just look and say that was nice. That was a nice time, so it's more of a somebody else You know more than what, I" m more connected to what I'm doing today. So, it's just a nice connection, of another person. Yeah. We were saying that, compared to today, it looks like you're wearing a snow suit or something. [ LAUGH ] Bikini that's on the cover. Love SI, they sign my paychecks. And also, you know, Sport's Illustrated at that time, wasnt as big a deal, as it is today. Yeah I want to get a little bit into your story before we talk about your activism now, which is basically, you are going along as a super model, hundreds of magazine covers, contracts. And then at the age of 38, sadly, your husband passed away. You had a daughter. And modeling is big business. And when you went back to the business, what did you find? I went back because you have a burning thing under your ****, which is my daughter, and to take care of my daughter. And the industry said to me, you are so over the hill, you are so finished, you will never work in this industry again. And I went, my God, I'm 38, that's so wrong. I'm only at the beginning of who I'm I am, and I had an idea that I could change the perception of aging, and what beauty was. Have a dialogue about what is beauty, if one is beautiful, one should be beautiful their whole life. So I felt I could change the perception of the industry from the inside out. So I started doing that in the early 90s when there was very little representation of a woman over 40. So it was interesting. But I started like as a receptionist. I had to get in somewhere. So I started as a receptionist. My job was, I've been a cover girl and I was answering the phone, making coffee and washing the dishes. And no one knew what I had done before. So they go like Dale, and I go yes, and they say go make the coffee, okay cream and sugar? And then so it's kind of like that. And then, suddenly, when I was filing I learned a lot there. I learnt about humility, I learnt about what women do all over the world, every day and I knew I would not stay there but I wanted to get into the industry and work my way back up again. Because it was like being in a glass ceiling. I was filing one day I saw that it was an advertising agency that coyote who they had used in a TV commercial was making more money than I was. And at that point I said I gotta move on. And you did. That really leads to what you have done with your life since. Many, many things. But, education became something that was a touchstone for you. How did you get involved now- At the very early stages and then up to having your own foundation which [ UNKNOWN ]. I came from a family that gave back. So we were very conscious of giving back and bring people into our home. You know halfway homes, things like that. So I had that as a background. But I didn't really focus on education in the beginning I was lucky enough to be a UNICEF ambassador. So I've done that for ten years, going all over the country. And one of the first countries I lobbied to go to was Darfur and it was intense. It was a Stage 5 security so it was highly difficult job and they wanted to give me a cushy job cuz they thought I came from the fashion world. And people who know me know I like to roll up my sleeves, get in there and see it. See it and bring back the story. And so that was really transformative for me to see the women there, to see what was going on. The situation, there was about, maybe it was about 75, 000 refugees, women who, they would tell me and I stayed a long time and interviewed them. And ask them what they did and one woman said in my village before I was the wisdom. I was the one everyone went to. Here I'm just existing. And they would go out and catch firewood, because they were only raped whereas the men were killed. So it was very intense so to come back into this world and touch base again. But it was really interesting to merge the two worlds. But I did a lot of trips in Africa with UNICEF before I felt able or experienced enough to form my own organization and it was really in a trip to Angola. I was in a rural clinic in Angola where women had walked all night with babies strapped to their backs to get medical services and one of the doctors pulled me aside when we turning the clinics and said, can you help us, we're missing two microscopes And I said, yeah, sure, I'll go ask UNICEF. And I went to UNICEF and I said, look, they need two microscopes. Can you give them two microscopes? And UNICEF looked at me and they said, we're really sorry, that's way too small for us. So at that moment, I thought wow, that's not too small For these women that walked all night. And at that moment, a light bulb went off and I thought to myself, there is room for a smaller organization that can work with these bigger organizations, that can seize the problem, and turn it around. And in doing it, I didn't know how to do a non profit. I mean, I had my experiences with UNICEF. But in building it I learned a lot about that and it's an incredibly passionate field to be in. So it focused, there are many good things but education to me is game changer. And girls education and especially secondary education because that's where you lose a girl. At 12 years old. That girl, is either gonna be circumcised, an arranged marriage, or pulled back into the family to work. Or married off to some older man, and she's gonna have a life of poverty probably. So that's why we focus on the teen girls. I want to go back to that, filling in the gaps, between this huge organization, UNICEF, and then what you're doing. So how have you been able to do that? The two microscopes, but tell us more. You know we work very closely with partners on the ground. and we identify a problem. Master card has been one of our great sponsors and funders. They have given us grants to study. We study countries and decide where we wanna be. We don't go and just work independently. We find a partner And we decide where we're gonna be. We're in eight countries so we've built a school in Haiti, we've built with LVMH, it's been a great company for us too. So we find these companies, and any one of you that's out there that wants to work with us, we would love to have this dialog with you. But we find wonderful companies that wanna make a difference for women and girls out there. LDMH, we built a school in Senegal with them. We worked with Let Girls Learn and the Peace Corps in the Gambia. We did a social impact fund there. And we've worked in the Masai Mara where I went over to help build an all girls high school, the first one there, and found out that the girls tuitions weren't taken care of. So that was one of the first projects of WomenOne. And now we are burrowing in in Kenya in [ UNKNOWN ] which is just about three hours out of Nairobi, where we're really literally taking girls off the street and pulling them into school and doing wrap around services. We also worked, I had a tour all around Turkey with the Turkish Philanthropy Funds And when I was there I asked to meet with Syrian refugees. This is awhile back. And what we did is we partnered with Duke University and supported fellows in the field. And we created a leadership and media program by giving girls cameras in Zaatari camp, which is the second largest Refugee camp in the world, 95, 000 refugees there. And this was really early on. So we did that, and also in Turkey, and we asked them to film and photograph what they couldn't speak about. And the end result is so powerful, the films, the photographs. These are girls who are educated, and deep and they write poetry. One girl whose I think she's like 14, and she said I'm a bridge between despair and hope. And these just deep things that they say. So you really find tremendous passion with these girls. You really find that they want it so badly. When you say things like, Female circumcision and been married off I think we're so lucky in this room that that's a very abstract thing for us here in America. How do you bring that home to an audience and really show in the videos yes but just how do you make that up like a whole and You know, digestible for an audience that it seems so abstract. I think part of my job is to go where not everyone wants to go or can go. So I'm able to go, I have the freedom to go And my strength, I think, is I have to see myself. If I can see myself, and see the story, and gather the stories, I can bring them back to tell you. And then you don't have to go to Africa, you don't have to get dirty, you don't have to be in danger, you don't have to do those things if you don't want to. Although, I would like to take a group to see what we're doing. So we're pulling that together. So really, it's to tell the story. And I think we understand, what I found with women everywhere, if they're living in a mud hut or they're in an extreme situation, or in a refugee escaping, they still want the same things we want. They want their children to be healthy, they want them to be happy, and they want them to be educated. And they know more than our own children, that the education that they are striving for, is the doorway that will open up their world. And so, I think that that's what they fight for, what they're passionate for. We had one girl in our program, that came to audition. And that's what's so hard. You have to interview these girls, and we maybe only have funds for 40 girls. Then you say well what happens to the 41st girl and the 42nd girl? We have to do something for her, But she came with a nail in her foot limping to go to the audition, she wanted it so badly. So in the middle of the interview she said, well. They go, we said, what's the matter? I have a nail in my foot. We were going, my God, and we thought someone with that kind of passion, she's in. Because we know if you give her an opportunity She's gonna for it then that's [ audio cuts in and out ]. Thank you so much. May I just say that I think that education is the issue of our time and educating our girls Is the most important issue right now, and I think all of you in this room are here because you had a great education. And we need to come together and help those girls that don't have the opportunity. Open it up, and we need those pockets of calm to make the world a stable place, especially now, so there's a sense of urgency. Yeah. So, thank you. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you Gail. [ MUSIC ]