When Hillary Clinton steps onto the Lead On stage in Santa Clara, California on Tuesday, it will be the first time a U.S. audience has seen the former secretary of state speaking at a public event in over two months.
While this is somewhat unique for a woman who is currently putting the pieces in place for a presidential run, it hasn’t dampened the mood of the 5,000 women — mostly technology company executives — that Clinton will address at the women’s leadership event organized by Watermark.
“There is a lot of speculation around her future plans, so based on that, there is a lot of anticipation,” Marlene Williamson, CEO of Watermark, said in a phone interview with CNN. “Certainly Watermark and this conference are nonpartisan, but is very exciting to think of a future leader of the United States being a female.”
The day-long event, which also features speeches from designer Diane Von Furstenberg and journalist Jill Abramson, cost the women $245 to attend and is sold out. Organizers said Clinton headlining the event was the biggest draw.
But the event is as much about Clinton addressing the audience, as it is about the former secretary of state and frontrunner for the Democratic nomination touching base — again — with the influential leaders of Silicon Valley.
Tuesday’s speech will be the fourth time Clinton has traveled to the bay area in the past year. In separate 2014 trips, she headlined a marketing summit in San Francisco, keynoted a sales conference sponsored by a Clinton donor and spoke at the offices of Facebook Twitter and Google.
The visits stress the importance that Silicon Valley — and the area’s money — will have on the 2016 presidential election.
Event organizers said they expect Clinton will touch on a mix of current events and women’s issues during her 25 minutes of remarks and equal time of question and answer with Kara Swisher, the executive editor of Recode.
“Certainly we expect her to talk a great deal about women’s issues,” said Williamson, whose company is organizing the event. “We would assume that the conversation will go in the direction of world affairs and issues that are going on around the world. And she has a new grandchild, so on a personal level, I am sure hearing her new role as grandmother will be of interest.”
Republicans, in the past, have gone after Clinton for focusing on women’s issues. Allison Moore, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said on Tuesday that “if Hillary Clinton is going to charge women to hear her speak about leadership, then she should explain to them why she’s hired a mostly male campaign team, why she’s accepting money from foreign countries that don’t respect women’s rights, and why there wasn’t equal pay in her own Senate office.”
The statement referenced stories about Clinton hiring campaign staff, the Clinton Foundation’s fundraising practices and an analysis from the Washington Free Beacon that alleges Clinton paid her women staffers in the Senate “72 cents for each dollar paid to men.”
Clinton speaking to a women’s leadership forum is nothing new. She addressed a similar group late last year in Boston and spent much of the 2014 midterms talking about women’s issues and policies. Her most passionate speech of the midterms, for example, came during an event called “Women for Wolf,” a stump speech aimed at courting women voters for Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Tom Wolf.
But Tuesday’s event is unique because Clinton will be speaking more for herself than other Democratic candidates. The focus on her 2016 campaign has grown in the last month and Clinton allies and former aides have said they expect when Clinton runs, she will do so as not only the first possible woman president, but as a champion for women’s issues.
“There are many other nations around the world who have beat us to it,” Williamson said about having a woman leader.