Athena Film Festival Tickets Now on Sale

Mark your calendars! The 3rd annual Athena Film Festival will be held February 7-10, 2013 at Barnard College. The three-day line-up has been announced – review the list in Variety or online!! Many of the films that will be featured have recently been nominated for Academy awards. Beasts of the Southern Wild received 4 academy award nominations: Best Director (Benh Zeitlin), Best Actress (Quvenzhane Wallis), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. Inocente received the nomination for Best Documentary Short and
Brave received the nomination for Best Animated Feature Film.

Click here for tickets. All access passes for $65, or individual tickets for $12, and student tickets for $5 per show.

We arelooking for volunteers for the festival. If you, or someone you know, is interested in this exciting opportunity, please click here. A 4-hour shift snags you a volunteer pass that can be used at any film after tickets holders have been seated.

The Athena Center hosts TedxBarnardCollegeWomen

On December 1st, the Athena Center hosted the first Tedx Barnard College Women event. It featured ten dynamic women speakers who centered their presentations on a one of the Athena’s CORE10 – a set of strategies for success as leaders and professionals. This list of competencies include: inspiration, advocacy, communication, vision, leverage, entrepreneurial spirit, ambition, courage, negotiation and resilience.

As Jane Shure put it in her article about the Tedx event in the Huffington Post, “the time is now for women's natural collaborative leadership style to be valued… As the 21st Century unfolds, the challenge is on for women to value our differences, raise our voices, be our authentic selves and dare to lead.”

To read more about the speakers and watch their performances, please visit the website at www.tedxbarnardcollegewomen.com, or click here to watch Michaela Murphy's presentation on Resilience, or here to watch Linda Kay Klein's presentation on Negotiation.

Athena Welcomes New Staff

The Athena Center is excited to announce it has recently hired two new staff members. Erin Vilardi, who has worked with the Athena Center as a consultant in the past, recently accepted a position as the director of leadership development. Her work focuses on developing Athena's CORE10 - a innovate set of leadership competencies for 21st century women leaders - as well as professional education programs and strategic partnerships. She spent the last 18 months traveling to a dozen international cities teaching leadership, from Cairo to Dublin to Mexico City. Formerly Vice President of Program and Communications at The White House Project, a nonprofit organization working to advance U.S. women’s leadership, she created Vote, Run, Lead - the largest national political training program readying women for public office and civic life - training over 14,000 women since 2004.

Tomika Rodrgiuez is joining the center as our Leadership Development Training Manager. Tomika joined the Athena Center from DePaul University where she created and managed successful academic retention, leadership and empowerment programs for underrepresented students including, Women Empowered, one of few established identity-based programs for college-aged women of color. Her primary responsibility at the center is managing the Leadership Labs, supporting students in developing their personal and professional leadership capacity. She also contributes to the leadership development programs across the organization. Tomika earned her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication/PR from Wright State University in Dayton, OH and Master of Education from North Carolina State University. She has also served as a Residence Hall Director and as a diversity educator, advocate, and facilitator both nationally and abroad.

Athena Center Events

Power Talk: A Conversation with Sheila Nevins, President of HBO Documentary Films and Barnard President Debora Spar

Tuesday, March. 5, 2013

Diana Center Event Oval

RSVP NOW.

Sheila Nevins is widely regarded as the most powerful executive in the documentary community. Often described as the “de Medici of Television” for her unwavering support of nonfiction filmmakers, Nevins is responsible for developing, producing, and acquiring documentaries for HBO and Cinemax. Documentaries bearing her imprimatur have won thirty-four prime-time Emmy Awards, thirty-seven news and documentary Emmy Awards, fifteen Academy Awards, and twenty-five George Foster Peabody Awards—including, in 1999, a personal Peabody for being “one of the true independent spirits in television today, whose passion and vision consistently create excellence.”