2025 TIME Women of the Year Gala: Honorees’ Toasts

Nicole Kidman speaks during the TIME Women of the Year Gala in Los Angeles on Feb. 25, 2025. Credit - Amy Sussman—Getty Images for TIME

From activists fighting for women’s right to their bodily autonomy to Hollywood actors using their platforms for change, several women leaders across industries raised a glass to resilience, hope and courage at the 2025 TIME Women of the Year Gala in Los Angeles on Tuesday, celebration of TIME’s latest list of women from around the world fighting for equality and justice.

The event featured toasts from actress, health advocate, and breast cancer survivor Olivia Munn; founder and CEO of Women in Liberation & Leadership Fatou Baldeh; WNBA champion and Olympic gold medalist A’ja Wilson; Feeding America CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot; and actor and producer Nicole Kidman—who shared their perspectives and paid homage to the women who persevered in the face of struggle and inspired them, including absent honoree Gisèle Pelicot, who was applauded for her bravery. The 72-year-old mother, grandmother, and face of resilience for survivors of sexual violence after she waived her legal right to anonymity in a landmark rape trial in France. She could not attend the gala due to the ongoing case.

The night concluded with a performance by jazz musician Laufey, who was introduced by two-time Olympian and gold medalist Jordan Chiles.

Here’s what the speakers had to say:

Olivia Munn

Munn was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023. A year later, she decided to make that news public, sharing stories about her double mastectomy and cancer battle as a mother of two.

At the gala on Tuesday, Munn toasted to “healthy days” and shared an anecdote about perspective.

This past Friday, she said, she was holding her 5-month-old daughter, while her visiting mother sat a few feet away, watching a YouTube slideshow of jewelry with Vietnamese music playing at full volume in the background. In the kitchen, Munn’s stepfather was pouring borax on “every window sill in the house” in an attempt to stop an ant infestation. Her husband, comedian John Mulaney, came in from outside to “get some gloves because a FedEx truck had run over a rat in front of our house, and he wanted to clean it up before our 3-year-old son saw it … I could hear him saying, ‘This isn’t how I want him to learn about death.’” That same son was “wearing a space suit that he had completely unzipped and he was peeing off the balcony, yelling ‘Mama, it’s like a fountain!’”

To many, it might sound like a day of chaos, but the moment overwhelmed Munn with gratitude: “I have years to go in my cancer treatment, but on that Friday, my joints didn’t ache, and I wasn’t too hot or too cold from going into a surgical menopause, and my brain fog had cleared, at least for that day anyway,” Munn said. “As I held my daughter, I was so grateful that I was healthy enough to see every minute of it all.”

Fatou Baldeh

“Growing up, I was raised within a society where there were certain social norms, practices and expectations for boys and girls and for men and women,” Baldeh, who is from Gambia, began her toast. “These were unquestionable.” One such norm, she said, was female genital mutilation (FGM).

At just 8 years old, Baldeh underwent FGM. But it was not until she was at university in the U.K. studying reproductive health that she learned about the adverse impacts of FGM on womens’ health.

Baldeh has since advocated against FGM as founder and CEO of Women in Liberation & Leadership. “One of the greatest lessons I learned through this journey was that the cutting of girls was about power and control. Because in my reflections, I realised that when you pin a little girl on the floor and cut the most intimate part of her body and then tell her never to speak about what happened, then you are sending her a strong signal that her body does not belong to her, and she should not speak about violence or assaults,” Baldeh said.

Baldeh’s fight is not just about ending FGM, she added. It’s “about challenging the deeply entrenched attitudes and beliefs that perpetuate gender inequality.” Baldeh received a standing ovation from the audience as she dedicated her toast to the “strength and resilience of countless women and girls who have endured unimaginable pain and suffering.”

A’ja Wilson

Wilson dedicated her toast to the people who helped her get to where she is: her parents, her grandmother, and “the people that love me all the time.”

“It’s always been more than basketball for me,” Wilson said. “When I was younger, and a little more awkward and a little less amazing at basketball, I always prayed that whatever I did would help someone, bring a little joy and light to people’s lives.”

Wilson called on everyone to use their platforms to speak up—“One thing about me, I am not shy about speaking up for ourselves and for the next generation,” Wilson joked—and “celebrate, elevate, and demand equity for women’s sports, and the voices and stories of athletes all around the world.”

“I often say, ‘If you can see her, you can be her,’” Wilson said, recalling the faces of youth in the crowd at her games “seeing and believing that they can do what I do.” She toasted to “doing the impossible—because possible is on the way and it’s just a matter of time!”

Claire Babineaux-Fontenot

As chief executive of the largest hunger-relief organization in the U.S., Babineaux-Fontenot highlighted the millions of women and mothers facing food insecurity. “All across the nation—the richest country in the history of civilization,” she said, there are women “trying to make a way out of no way.”

Babineaux-Fontenot also toasted to her bejewelled shoes. “I wanted them to be symbolic,” she said. “I wanted them to be a symbol of all of the people who have lifted me up into this moment.”

Babineaux-Fontenot said she had three shout-outs for women who inspired her through their courage and conviction: Anna Martinez, who spent two and a half decades working at the LA Regional Food Bank; Babineaux-Fontenot’s mother Mary Alice, who raised 108 children through a combination of birth, adoption, and fostering because she refused to look past a child in need; and the third is “not just one woman,” she said. “It’s millions of women.”

“These women are my heroes,” she said. “I hope you, like I, will consider mothers across this country experiencing hunger to be Women of the Year, to be women of the decade, to be women of the century.”

Nicole Kidman

In 2017, Kidman pledged to work with a woman director every 18 months in light of the #MeToo movement’s reckoning with the paucity of opportunities for female filmmakers.

Kidman has more than followed through on that promise: she’s partnered as a producer and actor with 19 women filmmakers in film and TV since then, including most recently with the film Babygirl, directed by Halina Reijn.

The Oscar-winning actor toasted to hope, which for her means to “honor each other, create opportunities for each other, protect each other, and encourage each other.”

“That’s what this room is doing tonight,” she said. “All of you are creating hope.”

The Women of the Year Gala was presented by P&G, Rolex, Amazon, Booking.com, Chase, Deloitte, the American Heart Association, and Toyota.

Contact us at letters@time.com.