A rainy Wednesday evening ahead of International Women’s Day, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived at Estiatorio Milos in midtown Manhattan for a gathering of global leaders, academics and philanthropists, Secret Service in tow.

Among the other guests: Sheryl Sandberg, founder of Lean In and former Meta Platforms COO; H.E. Dr. Fatima Maada Bio, First Lady of Sierra Leone; and Princess Mabel of Orange-Nassau, co-founder of Girls Not Brides.

All these women were on hand to discuss one issue: how to tackle child marriage, a persistent humanitarian crises.

The dinner was hosted by the Women’s Initiative at the Institute of Global Politics at Columbia University, with guests including Clinton and Sandberg who co-authored the foreword to the Initiative’s recent report on accelerating efforts to end child marriage.

“This is an issue that really goes to the heart of how women and girls are treated around the world,” Clinton tells Forbes in an interview earlier that day, “This is an economic problem........

© Forbes