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Conference Speakers and Honorees
Kim Bottomly • Carol Moseley Braun • Andrea J. Cabral • Sonia Chang-Díaz
Susan Douglas • Irasema Garza • Amy Goodman • Silvia Henriquez • Lois Herr
Kierra Johnson • Dr. Paula A. Johnson • Kilolo Kijakazi • Adrienne Kimmell • Thomas Menino
Judy Neufeld • Deval Patrick • Stephanie Poggi • Priti Rao • Loretta Ross
Boston Women's Health Book Collective
It all started in Boston, at a women's liberation conference in 1969. Twelve women, ranging in ages from 23 to 39, met at a workshop titled Women and Their Bodies. After unpacking their own health care nightmares and negative experiences with doctors, they decided to turn their frustrations into action. From the civil rights movement to fighting for legal abortion, these women were no strangers to grassroots activism. Focusing on self-empowerment and raising their own consciousnesses about health and sexuality, they decided to work on a summer project that eventually led to the creation of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective.
In 1970 they published a stapled newsprint booklet entitled Women and Their Bodies. The booklet, which put women's health in a radically new political and social context, become an underground success. In 1973 Simon & Schuster published an expanded edition, renamed Our Bodies, Ourselves. The book transformed women's relationship with their health care providers and finally gave women agency over their own bodies through education. Translated into various languages and updated for different generations throughout the years, profits from the sales of the books even go toward improving the lives of women.
The collective went on to support the creation of the National Women's Health Network -- the first national women's health advocacy membership organization. The NOW Foundation is proud to honor the founding women of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective for their feminist contributions to the field of women's and girls' health.
Kim Bottomly is the current president of Wellesley College. Prior to that she was the deputy provost for science, technology and faculty development at Yale University. At Yale, in addition to being responsible for a wide array of academic, administrative and budgetary activities, Bottomly initiated successful new programs to enhance faculty career development and was instrumental in Yale's efforts to recruit and retain women in the sciences and underrepresented minorities in all fields.
A renowned scientist, Bottomly's research focused on the molecular and cellular changes associated with allergic and asthmatic responses. She was a member of the Immunobiology Study Section at the National Institutes of Health and a MERIT award recipient. She has served as editor of the scholarly journal, Immunity, and associate editor and then section editor of the Journal of Immunology. She is a former chair of the Committee on Status of Women of the American Association of Immunologists; former chair of the Women's Committee of the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biologists; and former member of the steering committee of Yale's Women Faculty Forum.
Bottomly is a graduate of the University of Washington and the University of Washington School of Medicine. In 2008, the university designated her as one of its top 100 alumni of the past century. Bottomly was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.
Carol Moseley Braun is the founder of Good Food Organics, Inc, which represents her fourth career. She has worked as a trial lawyer, a public official in local, state and national government, and as a diplomat.
From 1999 to 2001 she served as the United States Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. As a consultant to the Department of Education (1998 to 1999), she advanced the policy issue of federal financial support for the rebuilding of America's crumbling schools. From 1992 to 1998 she pioneered membership in the U.S. Senate for women and minorities, becoming the only female from Illinois and one of two African Americans elected to the Senate in the 20th century.
In the Senate, Braun was the lead sponsor of successful legislation concerning school construction, pensions, agriculture and alternative energy, historic preservation, small business development, low-income housing and transportation. Prior to her service in the Senate, Braun served as a county executive, a state representative and an assistant U.S. attorney. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago, and has taught undergraduate and graduate classes in corporate and business law and political science. Braun holds 11 honorary doctorates, and has received more than 200 awards for public service. A new elementary school has been named in her honor, with its team name the Ambassadors.
Andrea J. Cabral, Esq., is the sheriff of Suffolk County, Mass., and the first Black American female sheriff in Massachusetts history. Appointed in November of 2002 and elected in November of 2004, she was an assistant district attorney in the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office for nearly 10 years. As chief of District Court and Community Prosecutions, Cabral trained and supervised 48 prosecutors in Suffolk County's eight district courts and the Boston Municipal Court. She also created and was chief of Suffolk County's first major felony Domestic Violence Unit.
From 1991 to 1993, Cabral was an assistant attorney general in the Trial and Civil Rights Divisions of the Attorney General's Office and an assistant district attorney in the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office from 1987 to 1991. Cabral authored the book Obtaining, Enforcing and Defending 209A Restraining Orders in Massachusetts and co-authored the article Creating Courtroom Accessibility, from the book: Same-Sex Domestic Violence.
Cabral is an Eisenhower Fellow and the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the NEWLA (New England Women's Leadership Awards) Courage Award, the Pioneer Award from the Massachusetts Minority Police Officers' Association and a Lawyer of the Year Award from Massachusetts Lawyer's Weekly. She is also on the board of the Mass Mentoring Partnership. Cabral is a graduate of Boston College and Suffolk University Law School.
Sonia Chang-Díaz is the first Latina woman elected to the Massachusetts State Senate. A tenacious champion for the voiceless, Chang-Díaz has been a strong advocate in the 186th legislature for public education; access and opportunities for low-income and immigrant communities and for those affected by foreclosures, hate crimes, and youth violence; as well as sound fiscal reform and good stewardship of taxpayer dollars.
Previously Chang-Díaz served as a public school teacher, learning first-hand the challenges facing our public school students, teachers, and parents and the role state government can play in improving our educational system. Chang-Díaz also worked in public service as a senior legislative aide to former state Senator Cheryl Jacques, as a key political adviser at the Barbara Lee Family Office, and as director of outreach at the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.
Chang-Díaz was raised on the idea that leadership, at its heart, is about service. It is a value deeply rooted in her family's long tradition of public service. A single parent, Chang-Díaz's mother raised her and her sister while dedicating her career to those most forgotten in our society: from adults with mental illness, to foster children in need of loving families, to at-risk toddlers and infants. Her father, an immigrant to the U.S. from Costa Rica, was our country's first Latin American astronaut.
Susan Douglas is the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan and chair of the department. She is the author of Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done; The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Undermines Women (with Meredith Michaels); the widely praised (and one of the top books of 1994) Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media; and Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination, which won the Hacker Prize in 2000 for the best popular book about technology and culture.
Douglas has written for The Nation, The Village Voice, Ms., and The Washington Post, and served as media critic for The Progressive from 1992 to 1998. Her column "Back Talk" appears monthly in In These Times. She has appeared on The Today Show, The CBS Early Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Working Woman, CNBC's Equal Time, NPR's Fresh Air, The Diane Rehm Show, Talk of the Nation, and various radio talk shows around the country.
Douglas received her B.A. from Elmira College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University. She is the chair of the board of the George Foster Peabody awards and received the 2009 Leonardo Da Vinci Prize. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., with her husband and daughter.
Irasema Garza is president of Legal Momentum, the women's legal defense and education fund. Before joining the organization in 2008, she began her career in the family court system, and later moved to public policy, working for the Department of Labor. Her varied experience also includes consulting Fortune 500 companies on diversity integration.
A Clinton administration appointee, Garza served as the first secretary of the National Administrative Office, successfully managing the creation of the organization and building coalitions between labor groups, businesses, and governments to address labor rights. President Clinton later nominated her to serve as director of the Women's Bureau, where Garza worked to ensure that economic security for women was a policy priority for the Department of Labor. She established innovative outreach programs that expanded the reach of the organization outside of U.S. borders, helping the government of Costa Rica to establish a women's bureau within its own department of labor.
From 2003 to 2006, Garza served as the director of women's rights for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Garza later served as the national political director of Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. In 2008, Garza served on President Barack Obama's transition team. She frequently provides commentary on women's issues for mainstream media outlets, as well as in the Spanish-speaking press.
Amy Goodman is an award-winning investigative journalist and syndicated columnist, author and the host of Democracy Now! airing on more than 800 public television/radio stations worldwide. Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award -- widely known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize" -- for "developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media." The Independent of London named Goodman and Democracy Now! "an inspiration" and she topped the 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009 on pulsemedia.org.
Goodman is the author of four New York Times bestsellers. Her latest book, Breaking the Sound Barrier, proves the power of independent journalism in the struggle for a better world. She co-authored her first three bestsellers, Standing Up to the Madness, Static, and The Exception to the Rulers, with her brother, journalist David Goodman.
Goodman writes a weekly column, for which she was recognized in 2007 with the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Reporting. She has received the American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Award and the first ever Communication for Peace Award from the World Association for Christian Communication. She was also honored by the National Council of Teachers of English with the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language.
As executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Silvia Henriquez has positioned NLIRH as one of the leading organizations working to advance the reproductive health and rights of Latinas. Within the first two years of her tenure, Henriquez increased national visibility through the 2004 March for Women's Lives and the National Latina Summit. Under her leadership, NLIRH has developed a successful organizing and leadership development training curriculum, a national policy agenda and built coalitions with state and national partners.
Henriquez currently sits on the board of directors of both the Reproductive Health Technologies Project and the Guttmacher Institute. At their 30th anniversary, the National Women's Health Network recognized her as one of 30 activists working on behalf of women's health. Henriquez is also the recipient of the 2005 Young Professional Award from the American Public Health Association. Under her direction, NLIRH was granted the Alfred F. Moran Public Advocacy Award from Family Planning Advocates of New York State.
Prior to NLIRH, Henriquez was National Campus Coordinator at the Feminist Majority Foundation, Outreach Director at the National Abortion Federation, and a Policy Analyst with the Latino Issues Forum. She was even a NOW intern years ago. Henriquez graduated with a Bachelor's in International Affairs and a Master's in Women's Studies, both from George Washington University.
National NOW/PAC has endorsed Lois Herr for Congress in Pennsylvania's 16th District. Herr is taking on the all-important challenge of unseating Rep. Joe Pitts (R), co-author of the outrageous Stupak-Pitts Amendment. Herr rightly called this amendment, "a direct attack on the freedom and privacy of American women."
Herr worked for 26 years in the telecommunications industry and has served on numerous corporate, non-profit and governmental boards. Under President Ford, she worked in the Office of Management and Budget. Since 1993, she has worked for Elizabethtown College in a variety of positions -- teacher, senior-level administrator, and Scholar-in-Residence, and has published two books.
Active in the Democratic Party, Herr was the endorsed 2004 and 2006 Democratic candidate in the 16th Congressional District. She was elected as a delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and in 2006-07 she served as executive director of the Lancaster County Democratic Committee.
Herr is dedicated to providing affordable health care to every person in the U.S., but not at the expense of women's access to reproductive health services. She is a longtime NOW member and a strong supporter of constitutional equality, equal pay, affirmative action, equal marriage rights and the full range of feminist issues. Herr understands the hurdles that women face every day in this country, and NOW looks forward to her arrival on Capitol Hill.
As the executive director of Choice USA, Kierra Johnson's top priority is developing new leaders and funneling them to positions across the progressive movement. Since 1999 she has helped Choice USA transform into a dynamic, youth-led and youth-focused organization.
Johnson began her career as a student organizer around choice issues at the University of Colorado. She started at Choice USA as a participant in its National Gloria Steinem Leadership Institute, after which she became the group's 2000 Maxine Waters Reproductive Freedom Fellow. The following year she joined Choice USA's staff as field director, focusing on state and regional campaigns and working on issues including reproductive health and rights access for lower-income women.
In 2002, she developed and ran Choice USA's state-wide youth-led campaign in California for emergency contraceptive (EC) access. As a result, the state passed legislation to require training for pharmacists to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception over the counter. It was the first state in the nation to embrace this standard, long before the FDA made EC over the counter nationwide in 2006.
From 2003 to 2007, Johnson was Choice USA's development director. Under her leadership, Choice USA encouraged innovative peer-to-peer house party fundraisers and started its trademark Generation Awards -- an annual event to recognize and give national visibility to amazing young leaders in the reproductive justice movement.
Dr. Paula A. Johnson is the executive director of the Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology and chief of the Division of Women's Health at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Johnson has brought her broad range of experience as a physician, a researcher and as an expert in public health and health policy to the Connors Center.
The Connors Center works to transform the health of women through discovering how disease is expressed differently in women and men as well as integrating leading-edge research about women's health into the delivery of care. The Center is unique in its innovative and interdisciplinary approach to women's health, which influences health policy, addresses the health of women globally, and trains the next generation of leadership in women's health.
Dr. Johnson, an internationally recognized cardiologist, founded the Center for Cardiovascular Disease in Women at Brigham and Women's Hospital in 2000. Dr. Johnson is a graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, and received her MD and MPH degrees from Harvard. In 2007, Dr. Johnson was appointed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino to become a Commissioner of the Board of the Boston Public Health Commission, and later became its chairman. She serves on several boards and has been honored by many organizations for her work.
Kilolo Kijakazi is a program officer in the Financial Assets Unit of the Economic Opportunity and Assets Program at The Ford Foundation. Her area of work is building economic security over a lifetime, which focuses on promoting public support for the creation of universal savings accounts from birth through retirement and Social Security reform that improves benefits for low-wage workers. This approach incorporates the expertise of people of color into all aspects of the work, including research, policy, and practice.
Before her position at Ford Foundation, Kijakazi was a senior policy analyst for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where she specialized in Social Security. While there, she wrote and presented research and policy papers, provided testimony before Congress, and served as a panelist at the White House Conference on Social Security under the Clinton administration. Prior to that, she worked as a program analyst for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, and at the National Urban League's Washington Operations office as a policy analyst.
Kijakazi received a doctorate in public policy from George Washington University, and her dissertation was published in 1997 as a book titled African-American Economic Development and Small Business Ownership. She also holds an MSW with a specialty in community development from Howard University and a BA in psychology from Binghamton University.
Adrienne Kimmell has focused her career on empowering women and advocating for their rights. As foundation and political director at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation and Political Office in Cambridge, Mass., Kimmell leads efforts to engage women in the political process through grant-making and foundation projects, and to support pro-choice Democratic women candidates and political organizations across the country.
Prior to joining the Barbara Lee Family Foundation and Political Office, Kimmell served as the executive director of the Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates and the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, where she led Planned Parenthood in advancing their public policy agenda through legislation, organizing, and electoral work.
Before moving to Florida, Kimmell managed state policy work for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in Washington, D.C., designing model laws and policies and developing legislative strategy to advance reproductive justice at the state and local level. In her past work with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Kimmell developed and implemented political and electoral strategy nationally and in the states.
Kimmell began her career as a grassroots organizer and later as a lobbyist for the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. She holds a Bachelor's degree from St. Lawrence University in New York and a Master's degree in public policy from Tufts University in Massachusetts.
A national leader on neighborhood issues, Mayor Thomas M. Menino believes that government is about helping people. The first Italian-American mayor of Boston, he was elected to his first term in 1993, winning 64 percent of the total vote, and won a historic fifth election in 2009. Previously, Menino served the City of Boston for nine years as a district city councilor from Boston's Hyde Park neighborhood.
Nicknamed the "Urban Mechanic" early in his career for his tireless work ethic and attention to the basics that make for a thriving city, Menino is working to inspire a generation of New Urban Mechanics, rooted in the belief that citizens are the best civic entrepreneurs. Forging partnerships to revitalize neighborhoods, strengthening the economy through workforce investments, and innovating in education, his vision for Boston is based on strong, welcoming communities that provide unlimited opportunity for success.
Menino's commitment to social and economic advancement is evidenced by the city's considerable investment in workforce development. His administration is committed to bringing the city even closer together across varied backgrounds. In 1998, Menino launched the Office of New Bostonians to welcome immigrants and connect them to the cultural, economic and academic fabric of the city. An early advocate for same-sex marriage and a vociferous proponent of criminal records reform, social justice is atop the Mayor's priorities.
Judy Neufeld is the executive director of Emerge Massachusetts, the premier training program that recruits, inspires and trains Democratic women to run for office in the state. Before Emerge, Neufeld was the manager of Recruitment and Community Partnerships at Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, the largest and oldest mentoring organization in Greater Boston exclusively serving girls.
For three years at Big Sister, Judy built relationships with corporations, universities, and community organizations to recruit thousands of women to serve as volunteer mentors to girls. She also developed and managed Big Sister's Alumnae Association to engage and involve former Big and Little Sisters and created a thriving Diversity Council to help recruit and retain women of color to serve as mentors. Prior to Big Sister, Neufeld worked as a community organizer with Stand for Children, a grassroots advocacy organization focused on increasing funding for public education and other vital state programs for children.
Neufeld has worked on numerous political campaigns, including Marty Walz's successful run for state representative and Marty Martinez's city-wide campaign for Alderman at Large in Somerville. Currently, she serves as co-president for Massachusetts NOW and chairs the Mass NOW Political Action Committee. She has been on the Mass NOW Board for more than three years and helped organize their first annual fundraising event, The Feminist Affair, in 2009.
Elected to office in 2006, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's life has traced a trajectory from the South Side of Chicago to the U.S. Justice Department, Fortune 500 boardrooms, and now the Massachusetts State House.
During his first term, Governor Patrick worked with the legislature to preserve marriage equality. He also signed into law four major reform bills, including education reform to improve public schools and close the achievement gap, as well as pension, transportation and campaign finance reform.
The first in his family to attend college, Patrick attended Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for a federal appellate judge before joining the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. He became partner in a Boston law firm in 1990 at the age of 34.
In 1994, President Clinton appointed Patrick Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, the nation's top civil rights post. At the Justice Department, Patrick worked on a wide range of issues, including prosecution of hate crimes and abortion clinic violence, and enforcement of employment discrimination, fair lending and disabilities rights laws. Notably, he led the federal investigation of church burnings throughout the South in the mid-1990s.
Patrick worked to foster equitable workplaces within the private sector, and he has served on numerous charitable and corporate boards, as well as the Federal Election Reform Commission under Presidents Carter and Ford.
Stephanie Poggi is the executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds (also known as "the Network"), an association of over 100 grassroots groups that directly help low-income women and girls to pay for abortion care. The Network also conducts national and state-level advocacy to defend and expand public funding of abortion and to help ensure that the voices and experiences of poor women, women of color, and young women increasingly shape the direction of policy and organizing work in the reproductive freedom, rights, health and justice communities.
Poggi has been an activist for social justice for more than 25 years. In addition to her work for reproductive freedom, she has worked in feminist and lesbian/gay journalism, the battered women's and rape crisis movements, and for racial justice, civil rights, and welfare rights. For many years Poggi worked as editor of Gay Community News, the national progressive lesbian/gay weekly, and later served as editor-in-chief of Sojourner: The Women's Forum, a national feminist newsjournal.
She has also worked for Survivors, Inc., a welfare rights organization based in Boston, as well as for Transition House, a shelter and advocacy program seeking to end violence against women. Poggi graduated from Stanford University with degrees in feminist studies and Italian and also has a master's degree from Mills College in creative writing.
Priti Rao currently serves as executive director of the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus (MWPC), a multi-partisan, non-profit organization committed to maximizing the participation of women of all ages in the political process and increasing the number of women appointed and elected to public office and public policy positions. She strives to expand MWPC's reach in order to advocate for women's political parity at all levels of government.
Rao previously served as the organization's associate director and most recently as acting executive director. She is a Cum Laude graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where she majored in Politics and Spanish. Rao coordinated field activities for congressional and City Council races in New York State, and in Massachusetts she worked on the successful campaign of Representative Niki Tsongas, the first woman elected to Congress from the state of Massachusetts in 25 years.
As acting executive director and associate director, Rao worked to design and execute strategic political and field support that helped fuel the successful campaigns of five women endorsed by the MWPC and elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 2008. She also worked on the 2009 election of Ayanna Pressley, who became the first woman of color ever to serve on the Boston City Council in its 100 year history. Originally from upstate New York, Rao currently lives in Boston.
Loretta J. Ross is a co-founder and the national coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, a network founded in 1997. SisterSong is headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., and serves as a national organizing center for feminists of color.
Ross' 30-year history in social justice activism includes being one of the first African-American women to direct a rape crisis center in the 1970s. From 1985 to 1989, she served as the director of Women of Color Programs for NOW, organizing the first national conference on Women of Color and Reproductive Rights in 1987. She went on to work for National Black Women's Health Project and the Center for Democratic Renewal. Between 1996-2004, Ross was the founder and executive director of the National Center for Human Rights Education and she was a national co-director of the April 25, 2004, March for Women's Lives in Washington, D.C.
Ross is the co-author of Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice, and author of The Color of Choice chapter in the anthology Incite! Women of Color Against Violence. She has written extensively on the history of African-American women and reproductive justice activism. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and is pursuing a PhD in Women's Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. She is a mother, grandmother and a great-grandmother.
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