AAUW’s Lisa Maatz inspires others
AAUW’S Top Policy Adviser picks up Pen and Draws on Midwestern Roots to Inspire Others
American Association of University Women
March 11, 2010 | Lisa Goodnight
WASHINGTON – Lisa Maatz, AAUW’s top public policy adviser, has joined some of the nation’s foremost women leaders and thinkers to offer life lessons in an inspirational new book for younger generations. Secrets of Powerful Women: Leading Change for a New Generation is a collection of 24 essays focused on the secrets to success — from personal tales of missteps to power pitfalls, power surges, powerful beginnings, and power suits.
Released in February by Lifetime Networks and VOICE, an imprint of Hyperion, Secrets of Powerful Women boasts a roster of authors that includes members of Congress.
“To be in the company of women such as Rep. Carolyn Maloney, my former boss, as well as Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Kay Granger, and Shelley Moore Capito is truly an honor,” said Maatz. “Some of these women are household names like Rosario Dawson and Betsy Myers; others are icons of the women’s movement, like Martha Burk and Madeleine Kunin, and I consider myself lucky to be among them.”
First brought together as speakers at Lifetime’s Future Frontrunners Summit at the 2008 Democratic and Republican conventions, the book’s contributors initially spoke to a select group of high school and college students as part of Lifetime’s Every Woman Counts campaign to empower and inspire girls to make their voices heard. In her introduction, actress Rosario Dawson says: “the women sharing their knowledge, stories, and passion in this book are asking you to step up, find your voice — your power — and use it.”
Maatz’s chapter, “A Process Tailor-Made for Women’s Strengths,” focuses on her early experience with the power of advocacy. As a third grader in Hinckley, Ohio, she organized her peers to fight for new stall doors in the girls’ restroom in her school. In the book, she explains how this seemingly trivial issue became a lesson on the power of collective action:
“I had first asked for doors all by myself and got nothing. In fact, I got worse than nothing — I got dismissed, even disrespected. But when I gave [my principal] a petition signed by two hundred of my classmates, I had doors in a week. Just imagine how such a lesson could shape your sense of the world at the age of eight.”
That experience taught Maatz about the importance of not only speaking truth to power but also taking as many steps as possible to reaching your objective: “I’ve become what I call a pragmatic idealist,” she writes in Secrets of Powerful Women. “I work toward big goals incrementally, taking one strategic bite of the apple at a time and using the sweet taste of those victories to fuel the next fight.”
