Marian Adair Award

Presented at the 17th Biennial Conference, Jakarta

Past President of the Women's International Club Jakarta, honored for her outstanding service and dedication. Presented at the Gala Dinner of the 17th Biennial Conference in Jakarta.

Presented at the 16th Biennial Conference, Taipei

Madam Julie Chien stood beside her husband, Dr. Fredrick F. Chien, former ROC Representative to the United States and Minister of Foreign Affairs, through decades of diplomatic service. In Washington, the Board of the Welcome to Washington International Club invited her to start its first sister club in Asia. In 1986 she founded the Welcome to Taipei International Club to help the spouses of foreign envoys settle into life in Taipei and learn its culture, history and customs, and to give Taiwanese members a place to learn across cultures. She led the club for 38 years and is its Honorary President. She has also chaired many women’s organizations and devoted much of her life to charity and to supporting people in need.

Presented at the 17th Biennial Conference, Jakarta, in 2026

Past President of the Women's International Club Jakarta. The 2020 conference in Jakarta was cancelled because of the pandemic, so WCI was delighted to present her award in person in Jakarta in 2026.

Presented at the International Conference, Washington, D.C., by Caroline Adair Dimmers, daughter of Marian Adair

Lael Mohib founded and directs the Enabled Children Initiative, a charity registered in the U.K. and the U.S. that supports Afghan orphans with special needs. While her husband was Afghanistan’s Ambassador to the U.S., she volunteered at the Embassy on women’s empowerment and on social, cultural and educational programs: she organized the Afghan Disability Rights Conference with Georgetown University, led the Embassy’s school partnership program and supported a dialogue series between Muslim-nation embassies and the American public. She has worked with village development councils in Afghanistan, with BBC Media Action and as Chief of Staff at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul.

Presented at the International Conference, Prague, by WCI President Maria Fernanda Arduino

Helena Kroftová Leisztner is a Czech artist and fashion designer who has given the clothes of her winning collections to charity. She worked for eight years in the media and cultural departments of the Argentinian Embassy, then organized exhibitions and ran her own business in Spain, Italy, Sweden, Thailand, Brazil and Central America. Back in Prague she has organized exhibitions, galas and art auctions whose proceeds support causes from guide dogs for the blind to young women artists. She is a founding board member of the Friends of the National Museum of Women’s Art and has designed national costumes for international pageants.

Presented at the International Conference, Hamburg, by Steve Dimmers and Caroline Adair Dimmers, son and daughter of Marian Adair

Born in Tehran, Hourvash Pourkian moved to Germany with her family in 1975 and became one of Hamburg’s few women entrepreneurs from a migrant background, with her own clothing company. She advised Hamburg’s Equal Opportunity program, served on the Senate’s Integration Council and founded Kulturbrücke Hamburg (Cultural Bridge), which links migrant communities with the wider city. For nine years she hosted Kulturbrücke TV, building bridges between the 180 nationalities living in Hamburg, and then started “Switch”, in which children aged 8 to 14 spend four days in each other’s families to learn their customs. In 2012 Chancellor Angela Merkel presented her with an award for her social work.

Presented at the International Conference, Denver, by Caroline Adair Dimmers, daughter of Marian Adair

Slavica Park left Bosnia at nineteen in 1991 and, in Germany, helped people displaced by the Bosnian War with counselling and cultural orientation while studying psychology. In 1997 she came to the United States as a refugee, alone and with little English, cleaning offices at night in Denver and studying English by day at Emily Griffith Technical College. A year later the college hired her; in 2003 she became Dean of its Language Center, where the program now prepares refugees for work through language and cultural training. She has served on the boards of the Colorado Refugee Network Council and the Literacy Coalition of Colorado.

Presented at the International Conference, Porto Alegre

Lydia Wong Ling began volunteering with the Women’s League Against Cancer in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1971 and became its chairwoman, helping women and children with the prevention and treatment of cancer through her own work and through fundraising. In 1995 her family founded the Ling Foundation, which has given 110 scholarships to Brazilians for postgraduate study in Brazil and abroad.