The International Women’s Forum is advancing women’s leadership across careers, cultures and continents by connecting the world’s most preeminent women of significant and diverse achievement. Through this global organization, IWF members come together across national and international boundaries to share knowledge and ideas, to enrich each other's lives, to provide a network of support and to exert influence. Through the Leadership Foundation, IWF helps prepare future generations of women leaders.

Founded in 1982 in the United States, the International Women’s Forum has grown across five continents into 21 nations and 60 affiliated forum locations. Now, 25 years later, there are over 4,200 women leader-members participating in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, the Pacific Basin, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. With forums throughout the world, the IWF facilitates networking among women of achievement and promotes opportunities for women in leadership.

IWF's founders, Elinor Guggenheimer and Eleanor Holmes Norton, envisioned creating a networking vehicle for top women leaders. Today, IWF is a world-class leadership association of global importance providing access, information, leadership exchange and development for women on issues of international concern.

Providing support, professional opportunities, camaraderie and input for women leaders at home where they live through affiliated forum activities, IWF’s substantive programming also provides a global stage upon which women leaders can meet, confer, resolve, and develop opportunities that expand prospects for women and girls throughout the world.

Through international programming, conferences, galas, symposia, communications, publications and special functions, women leaders are able to meet, experience and exchange ideas and goals with others whose decisions move industries, shape economies and define government policies worldwide.

The purpose of the organization is to provide a platform for women leaders to meet among their peers in a non-competitive environment where meaningful friendships and alliances can grow and form.

The organization is a source of learning -- across disciplines and with dimensions that are unique. Through programs and Conferences held by the IWF and its Leadership Foundation, women leaders enjoy enriching and positive moments that cannot be garnered anywhere else.

Each year, IWF recognizes two or three exceptional women by inducting them into the International Hall of Fame. Honorees who have received this award have been as diverse as: Susan Love, Breast Cancer Research pioneer; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court; Judith Jamison, Artistic Director, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; Roberta Bondar, Canada's First Woman Astronaut; Isabel Allende, famed Chilean Author; Margaret Thatcher, Former Prime Minister of Great Britain; Audrey Hepburn, International Film Star; Sally Ride, U.S. Astronaut; Maya Angelou, American Writer and Performer; Clare Booth Luce, Author/Stateswoman; Leontyne Price, Opera Diva; Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland; Katharine Graham, Chairman of the Board, The Washington Post Company; Barbara Walters, Journalist; Ella Fitzgerald, American Jazz Artist; and Rosa Parks, Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Leadership Foundation is the educational and charitable arm of the IWF organization. Each year, 12-15 women with exceptional potential are selected as Foundation Fellows and are teamed up with IWF mentors. The Fellows also receive ongoing leadership training, a customized week-long educational program at Harvard Business School, a customized program at the Judge Business School, and the opportunity to attend an IWF global conference. The purpose of this program is to help female leaders to break through the "glass ceiling" and to also assist in establishing an ongoing mentor culture for women.