Marie C. Wilson is founder and President of The White House Project, co-creator of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day and author of Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World.
In 1998, while President of the Ms. Foundation for Women, Wilson founded The White House Project in recognition of the need to build a truly representative democracy -one where women lead alongside men in politics, media and business. She left the Ms. Foundation in 2004 after two decades, to devote her full energy to the Project.
Over the past eight years, under Wilson's direction, The White House Project has lead ground breaking research and program initiatives like Who's Talking? in 2001, which highlighted the gender disparity on Sunday morning talk shows, men outnumbered women 9 to 1 as guests; Vote, Run, Lead, in 2000, to engage women in the political process as voters, as activists, and as candidates for political office; and most recently the The Real Security Initiative in 2005, to fundamentally change the landscape of national security debate by equipping women leaders with solid messages and trainings to speak authoritatively around these issues. Born and raised in Georgia, Wilson has five children and four grandchildren. She resides in New York City.