Speakers
Looking for a speaker for your upcoming Suffrage Centennial event? We have a few recommendations for you:
Featured
Looking for a speaker for your upcoming Suffrage Centennial event? We have a few recommendations for you:
Anne B. Gass is the author of Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine’s Fight for Woman Suffrage, published in 2014. Gass, who is Whitehouse’s great-granddaughter, speaks regularly on Florence Brooks Whitehouse and women’s rights history at conferences, historical societies, libraries, high schools, and for other groups.
The Seal Cove Auto Museum will open a major exhibit focused on the role of the automobile in women’s economic and personal freedom, and the importance the automobile played in women’s suffrage. Engines of Change: A Suffrage Centennial will follow two suffragists, Alice Burke and Nell Richardson, as they travel the country in 1916 promoting the right for women to vote.
Abusana is a native of Democratic Republic of the Congo. Micky arrived in the U.S in 1996 and enjoyed a successful run as a producer manager and buyer of one of Georgia’s largest markets. She holds advanced degrees in bio-chemistry with research in sickle cell, but most recently has been working to improve integration of new immigrants in the Greater Portland area.
Professor DeWolfe is a historian of American Women's History. She can speak on the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments, written at the first women's rights convention. She can also speak on the textile factory girls of Biddeford-Saco and the first labor strike in Maine -- young women walking out of the mills demanding better wages and working conditions.
David is Executive Director of the Margaret Chase Smith Library. He can speak on Margaret Chase Smith, a “woman of firsts” in American politics. She was the first woman elected to both the House and Senate; the first member of the Senate to denounce the tactics of Joseph McCarthy; and the first woman to be placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party’s convention.
Dr. Kirby was a senior economist at RAND, a nonprofit think tank, for over 30 years and served in several management positions, including Acting and Associate Director of the RAND Washington Office. She also had a joint appointment as an adjunct professor of economics and public policy at The George Washington University where she taught at the graduate level for 25 years.
Rhea Côté Robbins was brought up bilingually in a Franco-American neighborhood in Waterville, Maine known as 'down the Plains.' She is the author of several books of creative nonfiction. She is a founder and Executive Director of the Franco-American Women's Institute which promotes awareness about the contributions of Franco-American women to the culture, their families and their communities. She developed and taught several courses for the University of Maine offered through the Franco-American, Women & Gender, and University Studies.
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and chairs the LWVME Advocacy Committee. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits.