Friendship & Sisterhood

Swarthmore College in the 1980s was a hotbed of activism on divestment from corporations doing business in South Africa, working toward racially just admissions processes, sane foreign policy in Central America, and, of course, campus politics. Melanie and I were at the center of many of those efforts and spent a good deal of our time plotting strategy in affinity groups, joining protests, and organizing political events on campus. I was lucky to have Melanie and our quint-mate Jennie Uleman ’86 take the lead on crafting my campaign platform and literature when I ran for Student Council. Thanks to them, I served a number of terms.

Our careers took us in different directions and to different parts of the country. Melanie took a teaching job in Carrabelle, Fla., right after graduation, while I took a job on a U.S. Senate campaign in Pennsylvania that has led to a lifetime of work in politics and nonprofits.

Our friendship has always felt more like a sisterhood. Melanie and my mother have bonded over conversations about faith, immortality, and beauty, while I have bonded with Melanie’s parents over politics, knitting, and Britishisms; our last rendezvous was an impromptu beer-tasting in Brussels.

My Quaker ancestry, my activism at Swarthmore, and my experiences working within the American political system have fueled my passion for building a democracy where voters have real power to elect candidates of their choice and where legislative bodies reflect the people they serve.

I helped to found FairVote in the 1990s and more recently founded RepresentWomen to address institutional barriers in politics so that more women can run, win, serve, and lead.

In fall 2019, Melanie and I hatched a plan to create a Calendar of Women Leaders to celebrate the centennial of suffrage. The calendar featured art by Melanie, birthdays of female leaders, women’s suffrage milestones, pages devoted to female-candidate firsts, and RepresentWomen’s reform agenda.

The team at RepresentWomen wrapped and delivered more than 1,500 calendars with personal notes on Melanie-designed cards to members of Congress, female mayors and governors, women on the Supreme Court, college presidents, female athletes, and many others. In response, we received lovely and encouraging thank-you notes and requests for additional copies from fans like former Swarthmore Dean Janet Smith Dickerson H’92, who assigned us to the same quint all those years ago.

Melanie and I make a great team in the work for women’s representation and equality. We share a sense of pragmatic idealism that is grounded in the four years we spent at Swarthmore learning to think critically, to question the status quo, to praise generously, and to encourage professors to come out of the classroom and onto the beautiful grass of Parrish Lawn to see the world with fresh eyes.