Rebecca Sive's Vote Her In: Your Guide to Electing Our First Woman President addresses the unrealized dream of millions of American women: electing our first woman President. It makes the case for the urgency of women attaining equal executive political power at all levels, including the presidency, and offers a comprehensive strategy for every woman to be a part of this campaign—the most important of our lifetimes. Sive speaks with Michele Weldon, the editorial director of Take the Lead and author of Escape Points. This event is cosponsored by Take the Lead.



About Vote Her In: “inspiring, savvy and persuasive on why America needs more female leadership now. Rebecca offers not just the analysis, but the practical steps every woman and man can take to help get women into the C-suite and the Oval Office. And argues that the time to do it is now.”--Jessica Yellin, former CNN White House correspondent



About the Author: Rebecca Sive’s career has spanned executive positions − in business, government, philanthropy, academia, and the not-for-profit sector − where she has earned a reputation as a smart and inspirational women’s leadership and politics strategist, writer, speaker, and teacher. At the University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy, Sive was the founding Program and Academic Director of its Women in Public Leadership executive education initiative, and was a lecturer. Sive has received distinguished achievement awards from her undergraduate alma mater, Carleton College, and from the University of Illinois (from which she received an M.A. in American History), and leadership awards from the United Negro College Fund, the Jaycees, and the YWCA, among others. Sive was among the national leaders who developed women's issues agendas for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. She was a gubernatorial appointee to the Illinois Human Rights Commission; a mayoral appointee as a commissioner of the Chicago Park District; a founding board member of the Chicago Foundation for Women; is in Feminists Who Changed America, University of Illinois Press (2006), and has served as a director of many other organizations and foundations.

About the Interlocutor: Michele Weldon is editorial director of Take the Lead, and is emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University, where she taught on the graduate and undergraduate levels for 18 years. She is director of the Northwestern Public Voices Fellowship through The OpEd Project, where she is a senior leader. Weldon is the author of four nonfiction books, I Closed My Eyes (1999); Writing To Save Your Life (2001); Everyman News (2008); and her latest, Escape Points: A Memoir (2015) was named one of the best books of 2015 by Booklist of the American Library Association and was a finalist in the Society of Midland Authors Literary Awards for 2015. She has contributed chapters in seven other books and anthologies. Her commentary appears regularly in outlets such as New York Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Medium, Pacific Standard, Quartz, Slate and hundreds more. Weldon co-directed TEDX NorthwesternU 2014 and competed in the 2012 Moth Story Chicago GrandSlam in 2012. She is a frequent guest on radio, TV and digital sites.