 And it is my great pleasure to welcome everybody for the fifth of a series of annual lectures in honor of and as a result of the generosity in the vision of Sheke Fatima. And we are very focused on the importance of including all voices and in particular, including women at the table. Being at the table means really that you are a part of whatever is happening in a community or society. You are a participant. You are a leader. Your voice is heard. That is a table that reflects the full diversity of whoever is in that community. But to reach in a piece, we need to understand we are almost all of us the same. The conflict by which we kill each other, in reality, it doesn't exist. Well, it means a lot to bring these great women leaders together, to share thoughts, to inspire each other, and to empower our societies. I think by allowing us to provide our knowledge and our skills and our ability and our experience to our leaders, we're able to help define a little bit better how we approach local citizens and nationals, regardless of what country that we're in. When we first imagined the Sheikah Fatima lecture series, we really wanted to find some kind of metaphor that helped us reflect women's roles in peace building. And we thought the kind of symbolic getting women to the peace tables was really a good way to begin organizing this series of lectures. nun has officially recognized the imperative of integrating women into the peace process, passing a resolution, calling for a women's role in every aspect of peace building, including, so importantly, having women at the table. Women have to be encouraged to be security allies. I think women, particularly mothers, are the most important security allies, building a future peace architecture bottom up, which is very sustainable because it has this broad base. Each of the women you'll meet today are moving the world toward peace. With the final Sheikah Fatima lecture, we wanted to expand the lens of what we mean at the table. If you think of being at the table, it is really being a full participant with the opportunity to be a leader in whatever walk of life you choose. As a woman leader, you like to think that you are contributing in the broadest sense, not just as a woman, but because you have something to offer that particular topic. I come from a background where I did the weightlifting as a sport. It's a very male dominated sports. So first of all, it was not very accepted for a woman, but they don't realize that sports is sport. And it really helps women become more empowered, realize that they have their own inner strength that they can live by. You know, we feel like that same power of sport can bring people together. So sport is bringing peace to communities all over the world. We have invited a number of women who aren't necessarily thinking that they are doing peace building kind of work. And yet in essence, they really are. They're doing it through their work in law, through science, sports, and as a part of military. And we thought this was important to really amplify the fact that to be a peace builder, you don't have to be in the field of peace building. Science simply help people to understand how peaceful we are by nature. We take 22 chromosome from our mother, 22 chromosome from our father. The 44 chromosome will define you as a human. While those other two lift chromosome, they will define you as a male or female. So that's what makes us different. Only one chromosome. I'll talk about a leader from Morocco. Her name is Nawal El-Mudumakil. And she is a fellow Olympic gold medalist in the hurdles. She was the first Moroccan woman ever to win a medal in the Olympic Games. Goes back to Morocco, obviously hailed as a heroine. And now she's on the International Olympic Committee and has made a lot of strides with the IOC with regard to women in leadership. And so if you want to arm a woman with the requisite leadership qualities, the skills and the confidence to lead and be a force, sport is a great way to arm her with those skills. I think from a military perspective, women at the table talks a lot to our ability to go into areas that necessarily the general public would not be able to go to. I had the opportunity to deploy to Afghanistan and allowed us to go out to an orphanage and be able to work with very young children, specifically females, to talk with them and work with them. Their ideas of their future were so amazing and so innovative. They were, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a veterinarian, I want to work in astrophysics. And it was so amazing to hear these little girls say that. But most women, they need to know more about the rights. They need to know how to practice the right. I think I present the woman in my field and as a woman also how to translate all the law and give it so they can use it. I can be a voice for women in sports in the Middle East and what it means to me is opening the door for women to realize that they have a path. Having women in the Air Force and Air Defence actually had a huge impact on opening new doors for ladies, not only in UAE. We have to create new strategies to become more inclusive and smarter than we are now. And imagine if we are all alike externally, it will be so boring. So the difference between us, which is a very minor thing, that's what makes us unique. And I believe the science should play a bigger role nowadays in peace process. Let's make sure that they respect each other difference and draw a line where we can work together. I think it's important in the industry to have diverse voices at the table, but particularly women. I think women come with a certain amount of humanity and a certain amount of insight into kind of personal issues and issues of society that men sometimes might overlook. This building is very much a collective enterprise. It starts at the home front, and the frontrunners are those who educate at home, in the families, in the schools, but at the same time we need this collective approach. I believe that the role of the woman is great, especially that she is the leader of the family and she can raise her kids to be good citizens and also inspire through her work, other women, other young men also around her to follow her lead. So much of what we do every day, certainly here at the U.S. Institute of Peace, is to broaden our scope and understanding about the importance of inclusion. If I look back over my career, that one thing that has made a big difference is the example to girls or other women who may have encountered barriers in their quest to be metaphorically at the table and other women who are there, who are able to have a voice, perhaps even lead the conversation, helps them understand that they can do it. They can be at the table.