Keynote Speech at IMPERIA

Women are the global economy’s infrastructure.

Thank you for the kind words, Lynn. And, thank you for putting together such an important platform for women in business.

Thank you, all for joining me this morning at the New York Stock Exchange- a rare place where America’s history, capital, and corporate power intersect. It is fitting to have so many of our nation’s best companies in attendance.

Welcome, Women.

IMPERIA is for women who lead with independence, shape markets, influence policies, and help build the economic foundations of the future.

This room holds incredible power.

You represent nearly every major business sector. You influence capital, move markets, set trends, and turn ideas into industries.

For generations, women fought for a seat at the table.

The next chapter is about owning, growing, and making space for the women who come next.

That means owning businesses, equity, real estate, capital, and investment assets. It also means owning our ideas, our intellectual property, and our economic future.

People still do not fully understand the full scale of women’s power in the global economy.

Women are not just a part of the marketplace, simple participants. We are its foundation and we are its infrastructure.

The world’s biggest untapped economic force is not a new market, a breakthrough technology, or an undiscovered natural resource.

It is women coming together as owners.

Consider what happens without us.

Remove women as consumers, investors, leaders, caregivers, innovators, and managers of household finances, and the modern economy would not work as it does today. It fractures.

Remove women from consumer decision-making, and almost every sector would feel the shock.

Remove women from the workforce, and we would lose doctors, engineers, bankers, lawyers, and millions of other professionals.

Remove women from the unseen economy of care—childcare, running households, home teaching, and caring for elderly or sick family members- and the support structure that lets others work for pay begins to collapse.

Remove women from capital formation, and we lose investors, shareholders, asset managers, property owners, retirement savers, and those who protect intergenerational wealth.

Women drive demand through what we buy. We drive supply through what we build, lead, and finance. And we sustain the foundation that holds both sides together.

The question, then, is not whether women possess economic power.

The question is: What happens when we deliberately connect it? Consider the positive outcomes.

Influence exercised alone can change a company. Influence connected across capital, commerce, knowledge, and networks, becomes way more powerful.

IMPERIA is that connection: a global platform for women leaders, founders, and investors shaping the future of commerce. Together, we can convert individual success into collective momentum to create new opportunities, support each other’s growth, and drive lasting economic power.

Now is our time to move beyond mentorship and toward ownership.

Do not simply advise another woman. Invest in her.

Do not merely open a door. Create a real opportunity.

Turn networks into tangible value: capital, customers, contracts, knowledge, and access.

Be intentional with your purchases. Invest in one another. Invite another outstanding woman into the boardroom. Help an entrepreneur land her first big customer. Fund new ideas that should exist.

The women here have built companies, created wealth, and transformed industries. But imagine that power connected. Before you depart here today, begin to network with each other. Let’s turn this gathering into meaningful action.

Women are the global economy’s infrastructure. Now lets use that stronghold to own more of it, together.