The Empower Gala 2023
Featured Keynote Speaker


Rebecca Traister
New York Times bestselling author and writer-at-large for New York magazine

Rebecca Traister is an award-winning journalist and an astute cultural observer who has become a leading voice on feminism and women in politics. She is the author of three books, including The  New York Times bestsellers, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger and All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation. She is a writer-at-large for New York magazine and The Cut and has been called “the most brilliant voice on feminism in this country” (Anne Lamott).

Traister’s debut book, Big Girls Don’t Cry, was published on the heels of the 2008 election and helps make sense of a time in U.S. history that proved transformative for women and the nation. Although America did not elect its first female president, Traister explains how the campaign reopened topics such as gender, generational differences, feminism, and sexism, and ignited conversations on the left and the right. In her second, highly acclaimed book, All the Single Ladies, Traister delves deeper into contemporary American life through the lens of unmarried women, looking at how historically low rates of marriage can be a catalyst for massive social change.

Good and Mad, Traister’s most recent book, was a New York Times bestseller and was selected as one of the best books of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Elle, and more. With eloquence and fervor, Traister explores the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement. In both her writing and keynote talks, Traister tracks the long history of female fury, from suffragettes protesting outside the White House to the current #MeToo movement, and explains how society’s condemnation of female emotion has led to women’s slow rise to political power in America.

Traister’s writing has been featured in numerous outlets, including The New York Times, Vogue, Glamour, and The Washington Post, among others, and she has made television appearances on CNN, PBS, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show, and more. She lives in New York with her family.