WORKING WOMEN
Empowering philanthropist and Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Melinda Gates, was set to look at the transformed American workforce compared to the unchanged American workplace and discuss with a panel of leading industry women the way new technologies, new business models, and new social movements are redefining what it means to go to work during her Interactive Keynote at the 2018 SXSW Conference.
The core of her work and this keynote was empowering women and girls to realize their full potential and grow to be powerful voices in the world. The talk included the subject of facing the challenges of the aggressive, combative culture of the workplace and how her story is the same story of many women and people of color across all industries. The diverse modern workforce faces many barriers and biases that stem from the unchanged workplace lead by people who “still assume that talent looks exactly like one thing and comes from one place.”
The second part of the keynote included three women leading their industries towards a future that is inclusive and welcoming for all. Joanna Coles, Chief Content Officer at Hearst Magazines, Nina Shaw, founding Partner of TIME’S UP, and Stacy Brown-Philpot, CEO of TaskRabbit. What kind of conversations that need to take place, bringing women and people of color to join these conversations, and investing in young leaders’ ideas while also empowering them to be resilient and create change in the workplace.
Campaign: SxSW Interactive Keynote 2018
Client: Melinda Gates x SwSW | Pivotal Ventures
Agency | Team:
Publicis Experiences
Larissa McCartney, Design Director
Allison Arth, Creative Director
Lulu Almazan, Senior Art Director
Role: Concepting, Art Direction/Design, Illustration
Design Explorations
Interactive Keynote Design
The final keynote design landed in this very modern color and utilized continuous single-line drawings and simple animations to help illustrate the onscreen content. Throughout the discussion, there were also interactive elements that allowed the audience to ‘vote’ through their phones.
“Young people, especially women and people of color enter the workforce. They’re so eager to have their talents on display, to use all this knowledge of everything they’ve learned, to have their ideas finally taken hold, but all of a sudden they bump up against these barriers and these biases and that starts to make them question whether, in fact, they belong.”
— Melinda Gates