Our picks for Director of Women’s Bureau (con’t)…
February 11, 2009
by The New Agenda
|The New Agenda is supporting four candidates for the position of Director of Women’s Bureau:
Anita Perez Ferguson, Former President Natl. Women’s Political Caucus
Mary Beth Maxwell, Founding executive director of American Rights at Work
Ellen Bravo, Former National Director of 9to5
Robin Leeds, Winning Strategies
Yesterday, we featured Anita Perez Ferguson and Mary Beth Maxwell. Today, we feature the other two candidates:
Ellen Bravo, Former National Director of 9to5
Ellen Bravo is a long-time activist for working women. She began working for 9to5, National Association of Working Women in 1982, when she helped found the Milwaukee chapter, and served until 2004 as its national director.
Now Ellen teaches Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, including masters level classes on Family-Friendly Workplaces and on Sexual Harassment, and serves as a consultant to 9to5. She coordinates the Multi-State Working Families Consortium, a network of state coalitions working for family-flexible policies. In addition to Taking on the Big Boys, Ellen co-authored (with Ellen Cassedy) The 9to5 Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and wrote The Job/Family Challenge: A 9to5 Guide (Not for Women Only). She’s also written numerous articles and reports, including “Quality Part-Time Options in Wisconsin,” funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and an article in the March 2007 special issue of the American Prospect. Ellen is frequently interviewed by the media and is a leading spokeswoman on working women’s issues. A business editor once described her talks as “moving, witty and sometimes bawdy.”
Ellen has served on several state and federal commissions, including the bi-partisan Commission on Leave appointed by Congress to study the impact of the Family and Medical Leave Act. She co-chaired the Economic Sufficiency Task Force of the Wisconsin Women = Prosperity project led by Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton and serves as treasurer for the campaign of Congresswoman Gwendolynne Moore. She is a member of several boards and committees, including the Working for Good Jobs in America Fund, the Work-Life Law Advisory Committee, the Ms. Foundation for Women Advisory Committee, and the Grants Advisory Committee of the Milwaukee Women’s Fund. Among her commendations is a Woman of Vision award from the Ms. Foundation.
Robin Leeds, Winning Strategies
Robin brings a lifelong commitment and work to expand access to economic, civic, and social opportunities for all Americans and has consistently fought to increase the participation, visibility and leadership of women in politics, business and government. She served as a political appointee to President Clinton from 1994 to 2000 and was the Issues Director at the White House Office on Women’s Initiatives and Outreach for four of those years. There she played a significant role in numerous global initiatives relating to the status of women — U.S. follow-up to the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women, US Delegation to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, Council of Women World Leaders, 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Human Rights Declaration, CEDAW (Convention to End Discrimination Against Women) and International Women’s Day Commemorations.
Robin’s most notable public policy accomplishments in the Clinton administration include: raising the national childhood immunization rate to 90% for the President’s Child Immunization Initiative at the Department of Health and Human Services, implementing the National Voter Registration Act, “Motor Voter” in the WIC, Food Stamps and AFDC programs at the Department of Agriculture, and building the public private partnership that significantly increased youth training and employment for the President’s Youth Opportunity Movement at the Department of Labor. She is also credited with building presidential and congressional support for pay equity, Title X family planning, Title IX affirmative action, paid family and medical leave, reproductive rights and health, and domestic violence and sexual harassment protections.
During the 1980’s, Robin organized a number of key labor community initiatives for the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and Building Trades Council including a referendum campaign that prevented the repeal of the Prevailing Wage Law and the Pension Investment Project. As an active member of SEIU, she organized private and public sector health care workers. She also coordinated a campaign to implement the Boston Jobs Ordinance, which increased access for women and people of color to careers in the building trades.
Bravo to Bravo!!!
(yeah that was lame but I couldn’t resist)
I think her kind of experience is exactly what we need to have a Director of the Women’s Bureau who could get the subject of women’s issues back on the table. How could anyone think Gandy is a better choice? I’m baffled!
FYI – Ellen is speaking right this moment in DC about economics and a more activist gov’t.
Here’s the link:
http://thinkingbigconference.org/
Thanks Jill, it says video will be available tomorrow so I’ll catch her then.
Thia – I caught the last 20 mins or so live – she was, no surprise, spot-on.
I’ll catch the re-run tomorrow or on youtube later. I really want to hear her speak because what I know of her so far I like!
This post is great! Thanks to all those at TNA who gathered together this info to put together these bios. Very informative.
Jill–reading the NA profile on Ellen Bravo, I can see why you admire her so much. Her background is practically custom-
tailored to fit the Department of Labor Women’s Bureau.
Wow.
I also noticed your mention of Marie Cocco in another thread. I always look for her columns and well remember the one you cited (where Marie lists all the elements of misogyny she won’t miss).
That’s what I mean when I say there were so many opportunities for NOW to step up, initiate, and lead a national dialogue on sexism, and it just didn’t happen.
Has this information–i.e., that TNA is supporting these 4 women for Director of the Women’s Bureau– been communicated to whoever is making the decisions about who will be offered the position?
I just heard through a friend in DC that Gandy is in. I think we should support whoever is offered the position.
OT, but here are some women who might be worth looking at for healthcare related jobs.
http://www.ncpssmfoundation.org/board
The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare Foundation – Insuring the Essentials in the Twenty-First Century
….
The development of social insurance policies, particularly Social Security and Medicare, stands among the most effective and most popular domestic policy achievements of our federal government through the 20th Century. Few federal programs have served so many so well. This is because, as former Social Security Commissioner, Robert M. Ball states in his book of the same title, “Insuring the Essentials is, of course, what Social Security and Medicare are all about…” (The Century Foundation Press, 2000).
Through economic crises, natural disasters and war time, Social Security and Medicare, based on the concept of shared risk and responsibility, have remained reliable constants in a changing world. Social insurance programs in the United States have transformed the quality of life for millions of Americans of all ages and origins. They showcase the best of what government can do for its citizens. At the NCF we dedicate ourselves toward a clearer public understanding of why our national community must continue to support and nurture these programs and related policies.
Current research indicates that over the past two decades, negative and misleading public discourse has distorted public understanding of Social Security and Medicare’s long-term costs and solvency. The purpose of the NCF is to inform public understanding of the value and importance of social insurance to the health and economic vitality of both individuals and society.
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The New Agenda is a 501(c)(4) organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls by bringing about systemic change in the media, at the workplace, at school and at home. More...