Award-winning actress Kathleen Turner wins the Wear The Shirt Award at the 2023 Power Up Conference & Concert where she will reprise a scene in her role as journalist Molly Ivins in “Red Hot Patriot.”

They are all in the fight to win. And when gender parity in leadership arrives, everyone wins.

Because of that dedication to the mission of fairness, equity, gender parity and inclusion, these four exceptional leaders—Angel City Football Club’s Julie Uhrman; Kathleen Turner; Ms. Magazine’s Kathy Spillar and Darnell Moore—are each duly honored at the 2023 Power Up Conference & Concert on Women’s Equality Day that coincides with the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, D.C.

Fair is fair and these award-winners are fairly acknowledged and celebrated.

Leading Company Award: Angel City Football Club, Los Angeles. Julie Uhrman, president and co-founder

This year Take The Lead gives the Leading Company Award to Angel City Football Club, Los Angeles' professional women's soccer team that debuted in 2022 in the National Women's Soccer League. In May of 2023, Angel City Football Club was named Sports Team of the Year by SBJ and was the first women's team ever to win the category.

“The @Takeleadwomen Leading Company Award is given to @weareangelcity, Los Angeles’ professional #womenssoccer team that debuted in 2022 in the @NWSL. ”

Julie Uhrman, President and Co-Founder of Angel City Football Club, one of the world's only majority female-founded and run professional sports teams, is accepting the annual award. She founded ACFC with Academy Award-winning actress and activist Natalie Portman, and technology venture capitalist Kara Nortman.

“Equity is at the core of what Angel City does and how we show up in the world. The club was founded on gender equity and using the sport of soccer as a catalyst for this change,” Uhrman says.

“But the importance of driving toward gender equity is needed in every industry, and it is our hope that by sharing the Angel City story and continuing the work we are doing to show that women’s sports and organizations run by women can not only be profitable, but a viable investment,” she says.

“Being recognized by an organization that focuses on encouraging women to take their fair and equal share, and assume leadership roles is incredibly special. Take the Lead is so aligned with what Angel City has sought to do from the beginning, so we sincerely appreciate being recognized with this award,” says Uhrman, member of the 2023 Sports Business Journal Game Changer class, listed as one of the Most Influential People in Sports Business 2022 by SBJ, and named one of the Ten Influencers of 2023 by SportsPro Media.

““Equity is at the core of what @weareangelcity does and how we show up in the world. The club was founded on #genderequity and using the sport of #soccer as a catalyst for this change.” —@Juhrman.”

“Angel City is the first sports team to be majority female-owned, run, and operated, which is something we are so incredibly proud of. It is also another reason that we have been able to set ourselves apart. By not only giving women a seat at the table, giving them the opportunity to build the table from scratch,” says Urhman.

“Take The Lead has been encouraging women to lead and providing them with the tools to do so for years. Our hope is to continue to do everything we can to drive toward gender parity and we appreciate being recognized for those efforts,” says Uhrman, who is accepting the award at the August 26 Power Up Concert & Conference, Lead Your Intention.

It is fitting that Angel City Football Club receive the Leading Company Award from Take The Lead and that Uhrman is accepting the award, as she is on the board of the LA Sports and Entertainment Council, The Rose Bowl Institute, and the LA Sports Council, and is an active executive in the LA Chapter of WISE (Women in Sports and Events), where she was recognized as a 2022 Women of Inspiration Honoree. She is also part of the DraftKings' All-Star Network as an Advisor to Drive by DraftKings.

Wear The Shirt Award: Kathleen Turner

Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead is especially proud to award the 2023 Wear The Shirt Award to her longtime friend, Kathleen Turner, award-winning actress, activist icon and advocate for gender parity. Feldt is co-author with Turner on her memoir, Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles.

“@GloriaFeldt, co-founder and president of @Takeleadwomen is especially proud to award the 2023 Wear The Shirt Award to her longtime friend, @RealKTurner, award-winning actress, #activist icon and advocate for #genderparity.”

Listen to Gloria Feldt and Kathleen Turner on Take the Lead podcast

In addition to receiving the award, Turner will be performing a scene at the Power Up Concert from her role in the 2010 one-woman play, “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins.”

Ivins, who passed in 2007, was a celebrated social justice journalist, award-winning columnist and author.

Turner told NPR, “I have to confess that it's right up my alley... not just her humor but also her positions and her values.” Turner adds, "Molly is a liberal, absolutely, and believes very much in liberal values and believes in the community and the rightfulness of the American people. But more than that, she speaks of the responsibility and the right of being a citizen. And what I would hope and ... what I try ... to do in many ways is to galvanize people a little to become more active."

A longtime advocate for fair access to women’s health care, Turner served as chair of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Celebrity board and is a board member of People for the American Way and Meals on Wheels.

“A longtime #advocate for fair access to women’s #healthcare, @RealKTurner served as chair of the @PPFA board and is a board member of @peoplefor and @_MealsOnWheels.”

Feldt writes of her friend, Turner, “She won a Golden Globe award for Best Actress for Prizzi's Honor and Romancing the Stone and was nominated forThe War of the Roses, Body Heat and Peggy Sue Got Married, for which she also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Turner received Tony Award nominations for Best Actress for her performances in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Alexander Barbanell Leading Man Award: Darnell Moore

Darnell Moore, Vice President of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix and author of the 2019 Lambda Literary Award-nominated memoir, No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America, is a longtime advocate for fairness, parity and inclusion.

“The crux of my creative capacity is using storytelling to expand others’ world views,” says Moore, who has been a visiting fellow at Yale Divinity School and a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University, and Lecturer at Rutgers University and The City College of New York.

““The crux of my creative capacity is using storytelling to expand others’ world views.” — Darnell Moore. #inclusion #parity”

“For the last 15 years I have used creative content as a narrative of equity and gender parity as an entry point,” says Moore, who serves as a board member of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY and The Tobago Center for Study and Practice of Indigenous Spirituality. “That content is organized around what I understand to be who gets to be included, whose stories we are telling and creating access to stories told around the world.” He adds, “Narrative is at the center.”

Moore has served as the co-managing editor at The Feminist Wire since 2010 and an editor of The Feminist Wire Books (a series by the University of Arizona Press). He is also a writer-in-residence at the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice at Columbia University and was a 2019 Founding Fellow at the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California where his focus has been on the intersections of race, gender, and LGBTQIA+ identities.

Media Award: Ms. Magazine and Executive Editor Kathy Spillar

On the 50th anniversary of its founding by Gloria Steinem, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and other feminist leaders of second-wave feminism, Ms. Magazine receives the Media Award and Executive Editor Kathy Spillar will accept the honor.

The magazine that has been owned and published by the Feminist Majority Foundation since late 2001, has for five decades been telling the stories, reporting on the issues and amplifying the voices of women and those identifying as women.

“@MsMagazine has for five decades been telling the stories, reporting on the issues and amplifying the voices of #women and those identifying as women. #feministmedia”

Spillar told Feldt in a recent Ms. conversation, “It’s interesting, Gloria, how many times have people told us that Ms. changed their lives because they were able to find the magazine and for the first time understand that what they felt was wrong with the world was not them. It was the world. It was our institutions—practices of sex discrimination, whether it was in education or the workplace or harassment in the streets.”

Sppillar adds, “It has been a life changer for so many people. And I agree with you: Ms. is very much a community. We’ve continued that tradition of connecting feminists with each other, not only in their own communities and across the country but even worldwide, now that the magazine can be read worldwide through msmagazine.com.”

Register here for the 2023 Power Up Conference

As an advocate for the rights of women and girls and the necessity to amplify the voices of women globally, Spillar’s mission at Ms. aligns with the mission of Take The Lead.

“As an advocate for the #rights of #women and girls and the necessity to amplify the voices of women globally, @kathyspillar ‘s mission at @msmagazine aligns with the mission of @Takeleadwomen.”

“Feminism is good for everyone,” Spillar tells Ms. “That’s sort of a mantra, but it’s very critical that women do understand that they can lead because it’s the absence of women at these tables of powers that is resulting in a lot of the problems and ongoing injustices that we face.”

Take The Lead Leadership Takeaway of The Week:

“Don’t wait for permission. We have accomplished what we have because we didn’t wait for someone to tell us it was okay. Once we took the first step toward our mission to move equity forward, the next step was still hard, but it wasn’t as hard as the first.”— Julie Uhrman, President and Co-founder, Angel City Football Club

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About the Author

Michele Weldon is editorial director of Take The Lead, an award-winning author, journalist, emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University and a senior leader with The OpEd Project. @micheleweldon www.micheleweldon.com

Winning Leadership: Take The Lead’s Award-Winners To Shine At Power Up Conference

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