Tell us about a woman who inspires you.

Stacey Abrams! First of all, a fun fact is that we are both native Wisconsinites (she was born in Madison, WI), but we clearly have a preference for a warmer climate (living in the Southeast now). She served for more than a decade in the Georgia House of Representatives (2007 to 2017, and as minority leader for seven of those years) and is currently running for Governor of Georgia (again). I deeply admire her commitment to public service!

Importantly, she is addressing head on and heroically what I think is the most pressing public administration concern of our times—the erosion of voting rights. She founded the organization Fair Fight in 2018 to address voter suppression, which is happening across the country. In the first 6 months of 2021, at least 18 states enacted 30 laws that restricted access to the vote, and that does not include Texas, where SB 1 (signed into law on Sept. 7, 2021) has utterly wreaked havoc on voting rights.

I also greatly admire one of our newly elected NAPA Fellows, Carolyn Bourdeaux, who is a public administration scholar who has turned her career toward public service, now representing Georgia’s 7th Congressional District.

Why do you think Women’s History Month is important?

Women’s History Month helps to recognize women’s incredibly important roles in our society, particularly their leadership roles across public and private sectors. It also provides a reminder of how inadequately women are represented at the executive level across institutions, particularly in government but also in business. We need to hold up those who have been role models and urge the next generation to pursue great heights in their careers!

What steps do you think still need to be taken to achieve gender equality?

We need to extol and better reward the important roles women play in “care” labor and responsibilities across the life course, to nurturing babies to caring for our elderly parents and supporting other family members’ success. These roles continue to be undervalued and even penalized in some cases in our society. The labor that women provide in the workforce continues to be underpaid and is contributing to shortages in child care and other areas; the pandemic has made this even more apparent. Women need stronger supports (e.g., paid leave) to facilitate their work and care roles.

If you could choose any woman, dead or alive, to sit down and have dinner with, who would you choose? And what would you want to talk about?

It would be fabulous to have dinner with Rebecca Blank, who is currently Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and who will be the next President of Northwestern University. I first met her when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and I have been following and admiring her incredible career since then. In addition to her numerous leadership roles in academia, she has served as the Acting Secretary of Commerce of the United States. I would very much like to know more about how she navigated so many challenging issues in her time as Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as she had to reckon with a state legislature that was hostile to the university and incredibly tight budget climates, not to mention many of the difficult health and social issues of the day. She is a true “rock star” in my field, and I would love to learn more from her.

What is a women’s issue that is important to you, and why?

I believe that we need a stronger system of family supports to make improvements across society, from our governance to workforce to the health and well-being of our children. Until we see raising children to be productive members of our society as a collective responsibility, women will continue to face obstacles to our own and society’s advancement. I believe a child allowance is a policy we should be striving toward, and this was recommended by the National Academy of Sciences Committee that recently developed “A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty."