On May 10, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is meeting with participants in the Yale Chinese Women’s Leadership Development Program, at a dinner hosted by Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer. The 30 Chinese women delegates, who hold high-ranking positions in China’s national and provincial governments, arrived this week to meet with U.S. counterparts in Washington and New York and to attend a week of leadership seminars at Yale University.

The Yale program is the first of several public-private partnerships formed under the U.S.-China Women’s Leadership Exchange and Dialogue (Women-LEAD), which Secretary Clinton and Chinese State Councilor Liu Yangdong launched during the April 2011 U.S.-China Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE). Women-LEAD will enhance exchanges and high-level dialogues between women leaders from the two countries to tackle common challenges and to raise the visibility of and opportunities for women and girls in both countries.

Women-LEAD facilitates public-private partnerships as the vehicle for accomplishing its key objectives: to promote the sharing of knowledge and expertise on developing women’s leadership across all sectors – including entrepreneurship, science, and technology – and to provide support for capacity building programs for emerging women leaders.

Women-LEAD is co-administered by the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues of the U.S. Department of State and the All-China Women’s Federation.