January 16, 2012 — Greenwich Country Club will be the setting for the Greenwich United Way United Sole Sisters Luncheon and Fashion Accessories Boutique on Thursday, April 19th. This year's chairs, Keri Cameron and Karen Keegan, have just announced that Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, the New York Times best-selling author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, will be the guest speaker. This will be the Sole Sisters seventh Luncheon, the group's primary fundraising event of the year. All funds raised by the Sole Sisters this year will help the Greenwich United Way strengthen and support programs and services that assist children, youth, and families.
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The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is the true story of young Kamila Sidiqi who created jobs and hope for 100 women in Kabul during the Taliban years. Gayle met her in 2005 while on assignment for the Financial Times and a case for Harvard Business School on Afghan women entrepreneurs. Desperate to support her siblings and banished from the streets by the Taliban, Kamila started a dressmaking business in her living room. It flourished and she and her dressmakers proved to be the difference between survival and starvation for their families despite — and sometimes because of — the Taliban.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a Contributing Editor-At-Large for Newsweek Magazine and The Daily Beast, and the deputy director of the Council on Foreign Relations' Women and Foreign Policy program. She has been reporting on economic and development issues with a focus on women entrepreneurs for nearly a decade, covering conflict and post-conflict regions including Bosnia and Rwanda.
A former journalist with the ABC News Political Unit and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Gayle later covered public policy and emerging markets for the global investment firm PIMCO. Her reporting on entrepreneurs has appeared widely, including in the Financial Times, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, and the Daily Beast. A former Fulbright scholar and Robert Bosch Foundation fellow, she serves on the board of the International Center for Research on Women.
The event will feature a pre-Luncheon Boutique where twenty-one vendors will be selling stylish merchandise including handcrafted items ranging from jewelry to leather goods and scarves.
A special event to recognize supporters of the Luncheon at the Patron level and above will take place Tuesday, April 3rd, at the Samuel Owen Gallery on Greenwich Avenue.
