Ms. Angela Joo-Hyun Kang, Founder and Executive President of Global Competitiveness Empowerment Forum (GCEF) has been participating in the Women 20 (W20), the transnational network for policy recommendations on gender equality and women's empowerment to G20 that brings together women leaders of business, entrepreneurship ventures, think tanks, civil society, academia, etc., during its American G20/W20 presidency in 2026 as a Co-Head of South Korean delegation.
W20 is one of the official engagement groups of G20, like B20(Business 20), C20(Civil Society 20), L20(Labor 20), Y20(Youth 20), T20(Think Tank 20), etc., even though only B20 was recognized by 2026 G20 USA in 2026. Incepted in Australia in 2014, W20 was established for the first time during the Turkish presidency of the G20 in 2015 and its activities continued and expanded in China (2016), Germany (2017), Argentina (2018), Japan (2019), Saudi Arabia (2020), Italy (2021), Indonesia (2022), India (2023), Brazil (2024) and South Africa (2025).
It is the 10th year since Ms. Kang has been representing South Korea at W20 from its German G20/W20 presidency in 2017, since she was invited by GIZ, a German development agency of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), which supported the 2017 W20 Germany Secretariat.
2026 W20 USA has been operating its eight working groups - Agriculture & Food Security, Care, Decent Work, Education/STEAM/Digital/AI, Entrepreneurship, Health-Advancing Women's Health, Planet-Earth/Air/Water/Sun, Safety & Security and delegates of 19 countries and EU have been actively contributing to 2026 W20 USA's Framework - key recommendations, case studies, country examples, etc. - for eight themes which will be outputs, outcomes, and impacts of 2026 W20 presidency.
Ms. Kang has been contributing to the Planet-Earth/Air/Water/Sun Working Group including her virtual participation for the 1st Planet Working Group Meeting at the Inception meeting of 2026 W20 USA in a hybrid format on March 13, 2023 in New York City as well as virtual regular work meetings.
Also, Ms. Kang was invited as the Pillar 2 Lead - Capability, Talent & Market Readiness by the leadership team of the Entrepreneurship Working Group recognizing her activities as the elected W20 Digital Inclusion Working Group Chair during 2020 W20 Saudi Arabian presidency and a B20 (Business 20) member across six consecutive G20 presidencies. One of her achievements in 2020 was to trigger the first official partnership between 2020 B20 Saudi Arabia and UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub (BRH) for their joint statement and UNDP's follow-up project for capacity building of women entrepreneurs in Thailand and Indonesia. The Pillar 2 internal project plans to strive to improve access to digital infrastructure for women entrepreneurs, support women organizations and associations, and strengthen their capacity building for digital utilization.
All W20 delegate activities 2026 W20 USA has been implemented in the e-intranet platform, iSAW, dedicated for W20 but public information is available at the W20 website https://women20.org.
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