Story highlights Trump and Trudeau met for the first time Monday

Ivanka Trump helped lead a meeting focused on women in business

Washington (CNN) While the two vastly disagree on a range of issues -- trade, immigration and climate change, to name a few -- US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met Monday on rare common ground, a conciliatory gesture forged in large part by Trump's daughter, Ivanka.

Trudeau sat across the table from Trump in the Cabinet Room, surrounded by a dozen female CEOs and business leaders. The President pledged the launch of the United States Canada Council for the Advancement of Women Business Leaders-Female Entrepreneurs, intended to discuss, formulate and implement support for women in the workplace.

To Trudeau's left at the conference table sat Ivanka Trump, who so far been the loudest voice for women's issues in her father's administration.

The President kicked off the meeting by reading from a statement about the initiative's goals, which include growing women-owned businesses, retaining women in the business world, supporting women who work and who have families and helping female entrepreneurs have better access to capital in order to support growing businesses.

Trump thanked Trudeau for coming, and presented him with a photograph of Trump with Trudeau's father, the late former Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau.

Press pool reports that PM Trudeau offered this photo as a gift to @POTUS (Trump and Trudeau's father in 1981) pic.twitter.com/rBgZMhQ0DC — Elizabeth Landers (@ElizLanders) February 13, 2017

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