Raise Your Voice: Advocating for
Better Working Family Policy
Elected leaders and government officials are making decisions every day that affect working mothers and their families. Government leaders have an impact on health benefits, family and medical leave, workplace flexibility—even infant feeding choices. For example, some states are considering proposals to restrict the information new mothers recieve about infant feeding options. For more information, log on to babyfeedingchoice.org. If the voice of working mothers is not represented in these debates, who will speak on your behalf?
Be part of the conversation by voicing your opinion in the Moms in Action blog. Working Mother and Corporate Voices for Working Families created this blog to address issues important to working families. It offers a road map on public policy topics from early childhood development and after-school programs to eldercare, flexibility, and workplace support for breastfeeding. It's also a place where moms can speak out and take action.
Working Mother Media and Corporate Voices for Working Families also teamed up for a recent teleconference on public policy, advocacy, and working mothers. The teleconference was supported by a grant from Abbott, a Working Mother 100 Best Company and a member of Corporate Voices for Working Families.
Click below to hear the entire program
Teleconference Speakers Agenda (60 minutes)
PresentationsDonna Klein, President and Founder, Corporate Voices for Working Families
Deborah Pryce, Congresswoman, Ohio's 15th Congressional District
Carol Evans, President, Founder and CEO, Working Mother Media
Jami Taylor, Working Mother and Advocate
Question & Answer Session
Speaker Bios:
Donna Klein is President and Founder of Corporate Voices for Working Families, a 501(c)(3) non-profit coalition of leading corporations committed to building bipartisan public and private-sector support for federal and state public policies that strengthen working families. Corporate Voices works to facilitate a dialogue within and between corporations about bottom-line reasons to adopt business practices and public policies that strengthen working families and build more viable workforces. Corporate Voices also acts as a bridge through which the business community can convene, educate and communicate with policymakers and other community and constituent leaders around issues affecting working families.
Previously, as Vice President of Workplace Effectiveness at Marriott International, Inc., Donna Klein guided the strategic formation, planning, development, implementation and management of corporate-wide diversity and work life initiatives for Marriott for 15 years.
She was the catalyst for the present day discussion surrounding the work life challenges of lower income wage earners, and continues to drive public and private sector partnerships addressing the complex needs of this population. In 1999, she initiated Marriott's Catalyst Award-winning Women's Leadership Initiative with a focus on the development and retention of minority and women talent.
Donna Klein is past Chair of The Conference Board's WorkLife Leadership Council and a member of its Diversity Council. She is an Advisory Council member of Boston College's Work and Family Roundtable, an Advisory Board member of The Berger Institute for Work, Family & Children, Claremont McKenna College, and a member of the Family & Children Committee of the National Academy of Sciences. She also serves on the Advisory Boards of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, the Southern Institute on Children and Families, and the After School Alliance.
Donna Klein and Marriott received the Optimus Award for Corporate Courage from the Personnel Journal in 1996. In 1998, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Metropolitan Washington Work Life Coalition. In 1999, Donna Klein was honored to receive the Pacesetter's Award from the National Restaurant Association's Women's Forum for her work on women's leadership.
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Congresswoman Deborah Pryce first came to the United States House of Representatives in 1993 and has since established herself as an effective legislator uniquely capable of delivering for her central Ohio constituents.
At the start of the 110th Congress, Pryce was selected to serve as the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises of the House Financial Services Committee. As the highest-ranking Republican member on the Subcommittee, Pryce's role proves important to shaping legislation affecting Ohio's massive insurance industries and burgeoning market of securities firms. Additionally, she will serve as an active member of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit.
Throughout her 14 years in office, Congresswoman Pryce has consistently fought for central Ohio families. She has supported and authored legislation to provide tax cuts to allow working families to keep more of their hard-earned money; reformed welfare to help thousands of families end the cycle of dependency upon the government and enter the workforce; and fought to control the size and scope of government to allow Americans to more freely pursue economic success. Her common-sense approach to governing continues to be reflective of central Ohio's pragmatic value system.
But Congresswoman Pryce is best known around the country as an advocate for health issues and the protection of women and children. Pryce is a long-time proponent of adoption and serves on the Congressional Coalition on Adoption. She led an effort in Congress to expand and make permanent an adoption tax credit to make the process more affordable for families and remove racial barriers to adoption. Pryce has been at the forefront of efforts to secure funds for physician training at children's hospitals, including Nationwide Children's Hospital, and has authored laws to require drug companies to test drugs to determine their effectiveness in children and to improve palliative care for children with terminal diseases.
Congresswoman Pryce is a graduate of The Ohio State University and Capital University Law School. She has been inducted into both the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame and the YWCA Women of Achievement for her outstanding achievements in public and community service.
Pryce lives in Upper Arlington, Ohio, with her daughter Mia.
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Carol Evans is the founder, CEO, and head cheerleader of Working Mother Media. She is a working mom herself with two children, Robert and Julia Rose. Carol's history with Working Mother is a long and illustrious one. In 1979, she sold advertising for the test issue of Working Mother magazine, then published by McCall's.
Over the next ten years, Carol grew ad sales at Working Mother from $100,000 to more than $14 million and grew circulation to 750,000 per issue. She helped develop the well-known Working Mother 100 Best Companies initiative, which this year celebrates its 24th birthday.
Carol left Working Mother in 1989 and ran two other publishing companies for 12 years.
She returned in 2001, buying Working Mother magazine and the National Association of Female Executives, founding Working Mother Media just three weeks before 9-11. Since then she has launched several major initiatives, including the Best Companies for Women of Color, which includes Town Halls in 13 markets in the US, Canada, and Brazil.
In 2006, Evans acquired the Public Affairs Group, Inc. making Working Mother Media the largest media company in the country focused on diversity and the advancement of women.
Her first book, This Is How We Do It: The Working Mothers' Manifesto, was published in May of 2006. A nationally recognized speaker on work life balance, multicultural women and female leadership, Carol has appeared on every major TV and radio network and in hundreds of newspapers. But she is most proud of being the first mom to own and run Working Mother magazine.
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Jami Taylor is a working mother of two children, Jack (age 2) and Lauren (5 months). A native of the Washington, DC area, Jami witnessed the power of advocacy at a very early age. She experienced that power in a very personal way during her five years in South Carolina, where she took a leading role in advocating for improved access to maternity health insurance coverage for working families.
Recently transplanted to Boston, Massachusetts, Jami remains active in her advocacy efforts and the community more generally. She enjoys whisking the kids around to local meetings, events, and even the occasional rally at the Statehouse, hoping to instill in them the lessons she's come to know as true through her own experience: that civic participation is a privilege to be embraced, and even the smallest efforts to help solve a larger problem can indeed make a difference in people's lives for the better.
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