The International Women’s Forum advances women’s leadership across careers, cultures and continents by connecting the world’s most preeminent women of significant and diverse achievement.

The IWF brings together an unprecedented global membership to exchange ideas, to learn and inspire, and to promote better leadership for a changing world.

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 5 continents with nearly 5,000 women leaders participating in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, North America, and the Pacific Basin. With forums throughout the world, the IWF facilitates networking among women of achievement and promotes opportunities for women in leadership. Through international programming, communications, and uniquely designed events, IWF members are able to come together, exchange ideas, and share insights with other leaders whose decisions move industries, shape economies, and define government policies. The organization provides a platform for women leaders to meet among their peers in an environment where meaningful friendships and alliances can form and grow.

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.

Founded in 1990, the Leadership Foundation is the educational arm of the International Women's Forum. Begun in 1994, the Leadership Foundation Fellows Program is the only leadership training of its kind in the world aimed at high potential women of cultural, professional, national, and geographic diversity. The program sustains, prepares, and promotes tomorrow's women executive officers and principal leaders. It is multidisciplinary, international, and carries creative partnerships with INSEAD and the Harvard Business School .