My Favorite Professor

During senior year, I took “Women’s Studies 101” with Professor Joan Hedrick. I vividly remember sitting in McCook Auditorium discussing Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, and other feminist classics with 100 fellow students—only five of whom were men. It was perhaps even more mind-expanding than any other course I took at Trinity. 

A quarter century after graduation, I found myself in the role of managing director of Women Political Leaders (WPL), working with presidents, prime ministers, and parliamentarians around the world to increase the number and influence of women in politics. 

Some friends and colleagues have assumed that my feminism is rooted in a desire to see a more just world for my two daughters to thrive in. While that’s surely an influence, I credit Professor Hedrick and her course at Trinity to opening my eyes not only to how the world is but also to how it could be.