Maine NEW Leadership 2012 Program Opens June 1
The Maine NEW Leadership program, a University of Maine initiative that aims to educate and empower women to become civic and political leaders, will be held June 1-6 on the UMaine campus and also in locations in Augusta and Skowhegan.
Twenty-nine undergraduate college women will participate in the intensive residential training program targeting the next generation of leaders. The nonpartisan program is offered through UMaine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center and is provided at no cost to participants.
This year’s Maine NEW Leadership participants will hear from a variety of men and women in academic, municipal, legislative, nonprofit and other public and private leadership roles. The group will also travel on Tuesday, May 5, to the State House in Augusta for several events including a meeting with former Maine first lady Mary Herman, and will spend that afternoon at the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan.
The 29 Maine NEW Leadership participants selected this year include students from 18 institutions of higher learning, including all seven University of Maine System campuses, the Maine Community College System and private institutions. The program is open to female students enrolled in Maine colleges or universities, or Maine residents who are enrolled in a college or university outside of Maine.
Lilly Ledbetter, a former Goodyear employee who sued the company after discovering she was being paid less for the same work as her male peers, will be the keynote speaker at the Maine NEW Leadership networking reception and dinner, which will be
held at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 2 at the Penobscot Valley Country Club in Orono. The talk is not open to the public.
Ledbetter was employed at Goodyear for 19 years before finding out from an anonymous source that her pay was less than that of her male peers. She filed a lawsuit against Goodyear but eventually lost her case in the U.S. Supreme Court. The court ruled she took too long to file her complaint even though she had not known about it earlier. However, in 2009 President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which states that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing equal-pay lawsuits resets with each new discriminatory paycheck.
Contact: Mary Cathcart, (207) 581-1539, (207) 944-1411 or mary.cathcart@umit.maine.edu; Jessica Bloch, (207) 581-3777 or jessica.bloch@umit.maine.edu