Peres, Campbell salute women trailblazers

Former president Shimon Peres and supermodel Naomi Campbell salute women trailblazers at an event held at the Peres Center for Peace on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

“Women are the future,” Peres says. “There are women pilots, and we can learn a lot from them, they are strong, have courage, have precision, and are brave. A place without women is a place without a future. A world without women is a world without a future. I believe that women can teach us the difference between power and strength. Men know how to express themselves through power, but women have even more strength.”

Campbell noted at the event that she had “overcame many obstacles in my life, but never threw up my hands and gave up.”

“I was blessed with wonderful people who work with me and accompanied me along the way, and my mother, who is my anchor, and who showed me that, even a single parent can be a wonderful mother. I think that you must have courage and love what you do, you must be one hundred percent committed. The sky is never the limit.”

At the event, several woman are awarded prizes for their contributions to Israeli society, including Ofra Strauss, chair of Strauss Group and Chair of Jasmine, an organization promoting entrepreneurship among Jewish and Arab women business owners; Adina Bar-Shalom, founder of the Haredi College in Jerusalem; Tal Granot- Goldstein, CEO of HOT; Nadia Kanani, director of Hand in Hand, a bilingual school in Jerusalem; Tal Schneider, a leading Israeli political journalist and blogger; Annan Felah, a female trailblazer in the Druze community; Yael Ovadia, executive director of Latet Ahshav, which works to develop entrepreneurship and small businesses by women; Iris Beck-Codner, Group EVP, Global Marketing and Communications at Teva Pharmaceuticals.