Projects
The morning of November 3rd, I woke up and asked myself: “What’s next?” I did take a little bit of time following the campaign to reacquaint myself with my family and eat some Thanksgiving turkey, but I have definitely stayed active and have a few projects in the works right now:
I am partnering with the Women’s Campaign Forum in a program to encourage more young women to run for office. Many of you will know that this is a cause I am extremely passionate about. In most areas, Gen X and Millennial women have made real gains in reaching parity with their brothers. Young women are actually more likely to have earned a Bachelor's or Advanced Degree than young men and in many major metros young women are averaging higher annual salaries than their male counterparts (although the edge evaporates once women have children).
In politics however, we don’t seem to be making any progress. Out of 28 members of Congress under the age of 40, only 3 are women. That means that only 12% of the under 40 members are women which is EVEN WORSE than the 17% overall that women make up in the current Congress. I’m not only concerned with parity for parity’s sake though, our country would greatly benefit from a more balanced male and female perspective in decision-making. Research shows that diversity is THE MOST important factor in effective decision- making. It’s even more important than expertise. I’m not looking for a takeover, just some balance.
A large and growing body of empirical evidence shows that Fortune 500 Companies with women in senior management were more profitable than their more male-dominated counterparts.
Women legislators focus on different issues, work in a more collaborative way, and are more inclusive of citizens into the legislative process than their male counterparts. (It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don't Run for Office. Jennifer Lawless and Richard L. Fox. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.) So it is not just good for women to have more women in government, it really is good for the country as a whole.
Our initiative will be nonpartisan and targeted at women across the ideological spectrum so that while we’re laying the groundwork for young women in politics, we can also lay the groundwork for some respect, civility, and cooperation between the parties. Check back in for more details on my efforts in this area.
I’ve continued to speak to some of the important issues facing our nation on various news programs. Whether it’s cable television or local radio, I always bring my own perspective and a thick skin. I’ll let you know here on this site what appearances I have coming up. Also, if you see stories that are falling through the cracks, please let me know and I’ll do what I can to draw some media attention to them.
I’ll be posting to this site regularly and also contributing to other blogs around the web. I haven’t picked a specific content area to focus on but expect a heavy emphasis on some of my passions: young women in politics, education reform, politics generally, and whatever else is in the news or should be in the news. Your comments, input, and topic suggestions are always welcome!
My husband and I own a small business together which designs educational software. We’re in the early stages of designing an online replacement for the textbooks used to teach developmental math at community colleges. Basic math fluency is standing in the way of many individuals who are working hard to learn, grow, and improve their lives in community colleges across the country. Over 50% of incoming community college students require some form of math remediation. The existing developmental math textbooks present math concepts in the same unsuccessful ways that they have been presented to these students before. We believe our product will better serve the needs of students by emphasizing extraordinary teaching, relating math concepts to the real world, and using high energy situations to engage our learners.
I read somewhere that if you make your goals public you are more likely to accomplish them so I am publicly stating my goal of running a 100-mile ultra-marathon before the end of 2011. I was a swimmer growing up and in college and I’ve never been good at running but that’s kind of why I picked the challenge. In all seriousness, I’ve already started training and it’s going well so far. Assuming that all goes according to plan, I will be running in the Old Dominion 100 miler on June 4th starting at 4 am. Yikes! I feel nervous just typing it!!