She enlisted style to fight for social causes and invited First Ladies from around to network with top luxury brands. Evie Evangelou has combined runway glamor with sustainable fashion and celebrity names.

What do 55 impeccably dressed First Ladies from around the world have in common? Fashion, of course. When did you last see a shabbily-dressed First Lady? Each year, the wives of global leaders, top luxury brands and celebrities do lunch in New York. Madam Ban Soon-Taek, First Lady of the United Nations, welcomes DKNY founder Donna Karan. Franca Sozzani, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Italia, gets to share a joke with The Daily Beast founder, Tina Brown, and the Crown Princess of Norway, Mette Marit, may well get to exchange pleasantries with America’s own royalty – Hollywood’s Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron.

At the gatherings, First Ladies from around the world have an opportunity to network with top luxury brand executives and celebrities, cleverly taking advantage of the General Assembly of the United Nations, to which they have traveled with their spouse. The annual gathering is the brainchild of entrepreneur and former model Evie Evangelou, who realized the influence of such highly regarded people and formulated a plan on how they can inspire change.

Evangelou created Fashion 4 Development (F4D), inspired by what she saw by an exuberant career in the international arena of cultural diplomacy and international relations. F4D is a global platform that supports the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by harnessing the power of the fashion and beauty industries.

“Through your daily choices of what you eat and what you wear, you not only impact your life but the planet.”

After years of fashion and entertainment projects, which included UN programs, as well as gazing into a photographer’s lens as a model, Evangelou decided she could use the power of fashion to rather swing the spotlight onto social causes. She crafted a catchy tag line “Giving Back is the New Luxury” and set about showing how the fashion and beauty industries can develop creative strategies for sustainable economic growth.

“We want to promote Innovations that are designed to do more with less and influence the way fashion is produced and sold,” says Evangelou. In an unprecedented cooperation between diplomacy and fashion, leading women from politics, business, culture, fashion and the arts have come together to serve for the greater good of women worldwide. The focus is on the female side of HIV/AIDS and on highlighting the United Nation’s initiative “Every Woman Every Child.”

F4D’s global initiatives have been felt in 24 countries and have contributed to fashion production, trade, health, skills training and education. As in any business transaction, both parties want to see a return on investment. Evangelou has structured deals that create a win-win situation for brands and communities in need. A collaboration between Vogue Italia and Yoox.com saw 60,000 designer bags get produced in Africa, generating USD500,000 in wages for workers and delivering USD10 million worth of global media value to the fashion partners.

Givenchy provided costumes to Chinese singer Li Yuchun, allowing the funds that would have been spent on a performance wardrobe to be donated to Chinese healthcare for women and children. The approach raised USD200,000 for this cause, with Givenchy receiving USD500,000 worth of press coverage. With returns like these, outperforming the stock market doesn’t always need to involve aggressive business techniques – just a clever trade-off.

“Through your daily choices of what you eat and what you wear, you not only impact your life but the planet and the others you share it with.”

“We offer the conscious-minded woman access to the newest, most talented, green and compassionate designers,” says Evangelou. Not one to rest on her achievements, she has already created a new venture, Sustainia Living, a platform created in collaboration with Sustainia, an offshoot of leading Scandinavian think tank Monday Morning, with followers in more than 100 countries. “It’s the new fashion,” says Evangelou. “We’ve developed this project as a fashionable lifestyle choice to excite people about the benefits and possibilities of sustainability.” Moving beyond fashion, Evangelou has now added food to the mix, and thinks this is the way forward for a healthier you and a healthier world.

“Through your daily choices of what you eat and what you wear, you not only impact your life but the planet and the others you share it with,” she explains. Inspiring and motivating individuals to be conscious consumers, to develop conscious brands and to adopt conscious business practices is the goal of Sustainia Living.” At a recent U.N. function, Evangelou started proceedings by reading a message from her friend, Suzy Amis Cameron, environmental activist, founder, former actress and wife of Hollywood director James Cameron. “Every single bite you take tonight deliciously addresses climate change,” she read. An entire plant-based menu had been specially prepared for the event and  used as a striking example to guests that they had cut their total carbon “foodprint” in half that night.

As business leaders around the world wake up to the new opportunities around them, in an economy that values values, Evangelou’s job can only get easier. Surrounding yourself with like-minded people is a good start. Perhaps her success is best summed up by F4D’s Global Goodwill Ambassador Franca Sozzani: “Sometimes we get the feeling we don’t know where to start, but then we happen to meet people so capable and valued that all problems seem to slowly unravel.”

For men, meanwhile, Evangelou has launched the League of Gentlemen, with top fashion model Chris Collins. They came up with the idea of leveraging the voices and influence of distinguished gentlemen around the globe to harness the power of fashion, sports, entertainment and business to promote the work of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. There’s no need to perfect your “blue steel’ look from the movie Zoolander either – you’ll just need a serious attitude of wanting to change the world for the better.

Kevin Maggiacomo is a man on a mission to create gender-balanced leadership in all organizations worldwide by the year 2020. He will be the first to tell you, however, that this is not exclusively his mission or his initiative.

He kicked off 50/50 by 2020, a grass roots, web-based movement which sprung out of a recent TEDx talk he delivered. It has evolved into an international conscious leadership in expanded areas, including Maggiacomo’s own company, Sperry Van Ness.

Q: What inspired you to create the 5050 By 2020 movement?
A: The movement came about after going from the unconscious to a more conscious way of thinking about leadership and its positive effects on business. Within our own organization, Sperry Van Ness (SVN), there existed a disproportionate number of women who were high performers, yet we weren’t bringing any intentionality to recruiting and developing women. There was a pool of talent not being fully tapped into.

How did you incorporate gender balance at your company?
My wake-up call came during one of our SVN executive meetings in 2013. Looking around the conference table I saw that nearly all of our execs were white, male baby boomers. In that meeting we were creating our second wave growth plan, which demanded not only high innovation and creativity, but also healthy debate. I saw the polar opposite. Individual concerns were being set aside for fear of upsetting the group’s balance … sort of a “don’t criticize my ideas and I won’t challenge yours” dynamic. We weren’t getting the job done. This was groupthink at its worst.

It was caused by imbalanced perspective born of a gender-imbalanced executive team. The price was high and obvious. In that moment I recognized that bigger results would follow once I put in place a program which caused our leadership balance to shift.

In the 18 months that followed, we restructured our executive team which is actually now imbalanced at 60 percent women but hitting on all cylinders. We operate as a think tank for new ideas, we aren’t striving for harmony in our meetings, our profitability has increased by more than 100 percent and we’re trending positive across all key performance indicators.

To take things a step further, we restructured our statutory board this past April and it, too, is now gender balanced. Diversity and gender balance are the engines of innovation, and we’re doing everything in our power to ensure that this structure remains in place.

In doing this, we realized that this isn’t just good for our company, but for the world. We wanted to open up the thinking to everyone in order achieve a wider ripple effect, and 5050×2020 was born.

Why do you think it’s important?
First, this isn’t solely about giving back or doing the right thing. The business case for gender balance is rock solid. Our company’s category results aside, in the United States, women hold about 14 percent of executive officer positions and 17 percent of board seats. However, research by Catalyst found Fortune 500 companies with the highest percentage of female corporate officers reported, on average, a 35.1 percent higher return on equity and a 34 percent higher return to shareholders than companies with the lowest percentages of female corporate officers. So this is about generating better results as much as anything.

Second, striving for gender balance — and diversity for that matter — is the right thing to do. In 1970, American women were paid 59 cents for every dollar their male counterparts made. In 2010, compensation for women rose to a mere 77 cents for every dollar men made. And if change continues at the same slow pace as it has for the past 40 plus years, it will take almost another 50 (until 2056) for women to finally reach pay parity. It’s important that we work to change that.

What role do men play in gender diversity?
Men remain an often untapped resource for affecting gender balance. Men simply haveto play a role if we’re to affect meaningful change. There exists a preponderance of men in leadership positions who have the power to make these changes and position their businesses for better financial results. Yet, there aren’t enough male ambassadors for this change.

The gender balance issue, as I see it, has historically been framed as a women’s problem or burden, but it’s not. It’s a problem which affects all stakeholders. It represents an opportunity which, if properly harnessed, will create better leaders, better products and better results for all involved.

Men have to become gender-balance champions for change, and much of their work has to be pointed towards other men who aren’t yet fully on board with the opportunity.

Lastly, men cannot sit idly on the sidelines waiting for change. The change is coming, and those companies that don’t bring a level of intentionality towards affecting gender balance in their own organizations will be relegated to mediocrity at best or obsolescence at worst.

What are the barriers? How realistic is 50/50 by 2020?
It’s naive to think that people will change in six years. However, if you look at past movements in history, meaningful change occurred because there was a vision, an appetite for disruption and a plan to set the course for long-term change. We’ve reached the tipping point where people recognize the need and value.

Not all men will support or even give the movement attention, but I hope those who see the value in having a diverse leadership team will embrace it. The benefits are obvious: It raises value and draws IQ from 100 percent of the population versus 50 percent (of just men). It’s just good for business.

What do you think of some countries’ quotas for women leadership on boards?
Legislated gender quotas are controversial and punitive by design. That route is more of a “checkbox effort” where people are assigned positions because of their anatomical differences. Gender quotas in Scandinavian countries have yielded marked growth in the percentage of women on boards. That said, I’m not certain that these companies are better built given their mandated path to gender balance.

I’m a proponent of the free market affecting change through awareness and a better understanding of the powerful business case for gender balance. Show CEOs the money, and action will follow. I’m a firm believer in that.

What can people — male and female — do?
Evangelize. Talk about the opportunities which gender balance will create. Discuss the movement inside and outside of your organizations, and help people — through all ranks of employment — see that the change will yield a competitive advantage. Focus the conversation more on the benefits as opposed to it being a noble cause. Call it conscious capitalism or growing business at a faster rate while simultaneously elevating humanity … but focus on the fact that gender balance is simply good for business.