This story is from November 27, 2017

Ivanka's Yes to GES marks solo debut on global stage

Ivanka's Yes to GES marks solo debut on global stage
Key Highlights
  • Ivanka’s presence at the Global Economic Summit (GES) starting in Hyderabad on Tuesday may well count as her international debut.
  • Ivanka’s own entrepreneurial chops will be up for scrutiny when she delivers a keynote address and participates in panels on women's entrepreneurship.
WASHINGTON: The story goes that when the Clintons were the rising political stars in Arkansas in the 80s, Hillary put her career on ice to enable Bill Clinton pull ahead. Most people saw Hillary as smarter of the two, and when Bill was elected governor, and later President, one local pol is said to have exclaimed, "We elected the wrong Clinton!"
It’s an embryonic sentiment yet, but there are some in the Republican ranks who think Ivanka Trump is smarter than her father Donald Trump.
Ivanka’s mother Ivana Trump, the President’s first wife, says in her memoir 'Raising Trump' that her daughter could run for White House in the future and go on to become the country’s first woman President and its first Jewish one.
Amid such forecasts, Ivanka’s presence at the Global Economic Summit (GES) starting in Hyderabad on Tuesday may well count as her international debut, the start of her GEStation period in global politics. Although she has been a striking presence in her father’s meetings with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and China’s President Xi Jinping, her yes to GES at Prime Minister Modi’s invitation, truly marks her arrival on world stage, not counting her brief sortie to Germany for the first Women’s W20 summit where she was booed by the audience when she praised her father as an advocate for women.
Both Washington and New Delhi, which are co-hosting the 8th GES, are taking no chances of a repeat with a tightly choreographed event in which Ivanka will be shepherded by Prime Minister Modi through the opening of the summit with the protocol and ceremony befitting a head of state. Beggars, stray dogs, and even mosquitoes have been evicted from the confines of the heavily securitized summit.
Indeed, not since Jackie Kennedy in 1962 and Hillary Clinton in 1995 (both as First Ladys) has a presidential envoy (who is officially his advisor) received such individual attention. Laura Bush and Michelle Obama accompanied their husband on Presidential visits.
Ivanka will be joined by State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, US Treasurer Jovita Carranza, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Neomi Jehangir Rao, USAID administrator Mark Green and Overseas Private Investment Corporation president and CEO Ray Washburne, among others. Her team has kept a dignified silence on a story that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is undermining her visit by not deploying senior state department personnel, an overwrought account that does not seem to take into account the State Department has hardly any senior officials to space following its downsizing and unfilled position.

In any case, Ivanka’s own entrepreneurial chops will be up for scrutiny when she delivers a keynote address and participates in panels on women's entrepreneurship and workforce development before 1,200 entrepreneurs including 350 from the US.
Clearly, she has been preparing for the big stage. Among her tweets over the past week was one that spoke of “#GES2017 by the numbers: Women will represent 52.5 percent of #entrepreneurs, #investors and #ecosystem supporters at GES 2017. This is the first time that women have been the majority of participants at a GES!”
She couldn’t have chosen a better venue to participate in it given that her own first line of business involved fine jewelry in partnership with New York’s Dynamic Diamond Corp. Hyderabad is not only famous for its pearls, but is also home to the fabulous collection of the Nizam’s jewels, said to be the single greatest jewelry stash anywhere, and one that includes Jacob’s Diamond, a stone that the last Nizam of Hyderabad was said to use as a paperweight.
But all she will be interested is in showing that she is not a featherweight, and that she remains an advocate of female entrepreneurship and empowerment at a time American is in the throes of a well-deserved take-down of patrimony and misogyny. Personal friends with Chelsea Clinton, she also came to the defense of President Obama’s daughter Malia over the weekend after she had been followed by an inquisitive media during an outing with her boyfriend. “Malia Obama should be allowed the same privacy as her school aged peers. She is a young adult and private citizen, and should be OFF limits,” she tweeted.
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