Strong Women: East Bay Women's Conference Speakers Share Their Courage and Humor

It would have been nearly impossible to walk away from Monday's  anything less than inspired.

The 550 Bay Area women who packed the San Ramon Marriott conference center were held rapt by speakers that included world champion eco-racer Robyn Benincasa, who survived a steady stream of leeches raining down on her in a dark Borneo jungle, and internationally acclaimed playwright Eve Ensler, who recently beat uterine cancer and has worked to save rape and genital mutilation victims in Africa.

The conference, in its sixth year, is put on by the and Chevron.

Ensler, lunch keynote speaker, read from her newest book, I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, and drew applause as she shared the successes of her play The Vagina Monologues, in its 14th year.

"I'm feeling moved," she said, acknowledging the roomful of women and noting that Tuesday marks the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. "Something is happening with women in a huge way that's never happened in my lifetime."

Her Vagina Monologues production, in which female actors, often celebrities, tell stories of their relationship with this oft-taboo yet supremely important body part, was performed at 900 colleges this year and has raised $80 million for Ensler's V-Day project to end violence against women.

Her new book, which she signed copies of after her talk, is about what happens to girls around the world as they morph from passionate, alive and energetic beings into people-pleasing adult females who've become cut off from their real selves.

"In the act of pleasing, we lose track of ourselves," Ensler said. "We forget what we know."

Adventure racer Benincasa, a San Diego firefighter, shared all that she now knows thanks to doing crazy things like kayaking, biking, hiking and mountain climbing hundreds of miles nonstop in a handful of days with a four-person team that's been dropped literally into the middle of nowhere.

But her biggest obstacle proved to be far tougher than being stuck in bat guano in a cave or hanging 300 feet from a cliff: In 2007 she was diagnosed with osteoarthritis and eventually needed both hips replaced.

Did that stop her? Of course not. In 2010, 20 weeks after surgery, she finished a marathon and launched Project Athena, which helps survivors of trauma or medical problems reach their athletic dreams. She also started distance kayaking, completing 460 miles in one day.

"I never would have known I could do that without two metal hips," Benincasa said.