All Hail Joanna Coles and The Hearst 100 Power Women’s Lunch

Tammy Haddad and Joanna Coles at Michael’s for the Hearst 100 Women’s Power Lunch. Photo courtesy Haddad Media.

Women leaders in media, fashion and entertainment converged on the tony Manhattan media destination, Michael’s, to ring in the Hearst 100 Luncheon.

Hearst’s first chief content officer Joanna Coles hosted the lunch, newly elevated to her new role in September, after a smashingly successful tenure as editor in chief at Cosmopolitan.

Coles welcomed the crowd saying “I’m told that Mike Pence begins every meeting with a prayer. I’ll begin our entrée with a prayer and it goes like this: ‘Dear God, protect us from Mike Pence.’”

Cecile Richards also provided remarks to the room of power women on the merits of activism during the incoming Trump administration.

“Many women woke up on the morning of the election in a dead panic… we at Planned Parenthood had a 900 percent increase in women calling to get IUDs [contraceptives] the day after the election,” Richards said. Some of them literally said, ‘I want to get an IUD that will last the full duration of the Trump administration.’”

Cementing the critical role of the media, Richards concluded “women’s magazines and the women’s media have done a heroic job and they did this election in putting women first and telling the stories that no one would tell.”

Guests included Diane Sawyer, Diane von Furstenburg, Arianna Huffington, Megan Murphy, Christine Quinn, Brooke Garber Neidich, Aarthi Ramamurthy, Patti Harris, Charlotte Jones Anderson, Tina Brown, Gayle King, Norah O’Donnell, Peggy Siegal, and Ali Wentworth.

The Washington squad included Adrienne Arsht, Maria Trabocchi, Tammy Haddad, Stephanie Schriock, Maria Teresa Kumar, Kim Kingsley, Kimball Stroud, and Ilyse Hogue.

Other media stars included NBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, New York Times’ two reporters Vanessa Friedman and Laura Holson and media maven Holly Peterson.