Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee All the Best. One of the most life-changing classes I've ever taken was a class at Stanford taught by Anne Firth Murray called International Women's Health and Human Rights. And I've talked about this class before, and I'll probably keep talking about it on future episodes. This was a

really life-changing class and it examined the lives of women from birth to childhood to adulthood

to old age and especially focused on women in the developing world. And I've wished so many

times that every human being could take a class like that.

It was so important in my education and as a citizen of this world.

So I was really excited when my friend Becca Archibald, who did our episode on Sarah Grimke's

letters on the Equality of the Sexes, she's a great friend of mine.

And she gave me a book for Christmas last year that's called

The Moment of Lift, How Empowering Women Changes the World. And I kind of flipped through the

book and discovered that this book covered so many of the same topics that we covered in that

class and with really clear and precise language. And so as I picked the book up to actually read it

a few months later, I was just blown away just so many gripping stories from the author. The author is

Melinda French Gates and she's done humanitarian work all over the globe. So as soon as I read the book, I immediately added it to our reading list for the podcast.

And as I was thinking about who would be just the best reading partner for this book

and to participate on the podcast, I thought of my friend Sarah Abasi, who was in the class with me at Stanford. And I was so, so excited when Sarah agreed to be my reading partner. So thank you so much for being here with us today, Sarah. It will become a parent immediately as listeners listen to the episode. What a just a treasure of wisdom and experience that you have on these topics. So thanks for being here.

Oh, thank you, Amy. It's an absolute pleasure and honor to participate in this podcast. It's

something when you first told me about it. I was so excited to do it. And so I'm absolutely delighted

to be here. Oh, great. Well, so we always start with an introduction.

So I'd love it if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your story,

where you're from, and just some things that makes you who you are.

Sure.

I'm happy to do that.

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