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To advance knowledge and educate
the public regarding the accomplishments of
Frances Perkins -- the first female U.S. Cabinet
member, FDR's secretary of labor for twelve years, and
a principal architect of the New Deal and Social Security -- and
to carry on her commitment to social justice, workplace
safety, and economic security through educational programs,
publications, and related activities.
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To preserve and interpret the
nationally significant place that shaped Perkins's
vision of the world, the Perkins family homestead since
the mid-1700s, and to manage its cultural and natural
resources for the benefit of current and future generations.
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On November 8, 2008, Barbara Burt became the first Executive
Director of the Frances Perkins Center. A graduate of Boston
University and Harvard University School of Education, Barb
brings varied experience to the position. She has been a
writer and editor for many publishers and educational institutions,
including Houghton Mifflin, McGraw-Hill, Scholastic, National
Geographic, and Harvard University. Long an advocate for
responsive government and progressive politics, Barb joined
Common Cause in 2003, eventually becoming vice president
and director of national election reform programs. In 2007,
Barb became the online communications director for Chellie
Pingree's successful campaign to represent Maine's First
Congressional District in the 111th Congress.
"While the challenges facing the Frances Perkins
Center are great, it is exhilarating to work on
a project that will bring positive changes to the lives
of working men and women. I am deeply honored to have the
opportunity to bring the accomplishments of Frances Perkins
to a wider audience and to engage my fellow Americans in
the task of carrying on her legacy -- social justice and
economic fairness for all."
Contact Barbara Burt by e-mail at: BBurt@FrancesPerkinsCenter.org
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Dr. Christopher Breiseth is the immediate past president
and CEO of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute,
located at the FDR Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde
Park, New York, serving in that position from 2001 to 2008.
He was president of Deep Springs College in California from
1980 to 1983 and of Wilkes University from 1984 to 2001.
He earned his B.A. in history at UCLA, a Masters of Literature
in Modern British History from Oxford and a Ph.D. in European
History from Cornell. While at Cornell, he lived at the
Telluride House where Frances Perkins was a guest for the
last five years of her life while she was teaching at the
School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Together, Breiseth
and Miss Perkins organized two seminars for house members,
one with Henry A. Wallace, the other with James Farley.
Following Miss Perkins's death in 1965, Breiseth wrote an
article, "The
Frances Perkins I Knew," which provides some of the
material on Frances Perkins's life at Telluride House for
Kirstin Downey's book, "The Woman Behind the New Deal."
The article is available on line. He also served for a year
and a half in 1967 and 1968 as Chief of Policy Guidance
for the Community Action Program which was part of the Office
of Economic Opportunity, President Lyndon Johnson's War
on Poverty. He is married to Jane Morhouse Breiseth and
they have three daughters and two grandchildren.
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Tomlin is Frances Perkins' grandson, son of her daughter
Susanna and Calvert Coggeshall, an abstract expressionist
and designer. Tomlin attended Middlesex School in Concord
Massachusetts and then studied biology and botany, graduating
with a B.S. in Botany and Biology from the University of
Maine. Since then, he has worked in publishing and marketing,
mostly in the alternative energy field, focused on hydrogen
and clean energy. Tomlin lives with his partner Christopher
Rice and their yellow lab, Max, in Newcastle at the Perkins
family homestead.
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Kirstin Downey, an award-winning journalist at the Washington
Post from 1988 to 2008, is a business reporter whose work
has focused on illuminating the human implications of important
financial trends, particularly boom and bust cycles in the
modern economy.
Downey's coverage of the aftermath of the savings and loan
debacle of the late 1980s won her several regional press
association awards. In 1990, she was named a finalist for
the Livingston prize for outstanding young journalist in
America for her coverage of the abuse of government housing
programs. In the mid-1990s, her articles on sexual harassment
in workplaces across America, including in the Mesabi Iron
Range in Minnesota and at auto plants in the Midwest, caused
a paradigm shift in how people viewed a problem that had
been trivialized.
From 2005 to 2007, Downey led the country in reporting
on a worrisome but unrecognized phenomenon -- the dangerous
growth of risky new kinds of mortgages that threatened to
bankrupt borrowers and the financial institutions making
the loans. These loans have contributed to a downward economic
spiral worldwide. Her reporting went unheeded by the Bush
Administration.
Downey left the Washington Post in 2008 to finish The
Woman Behind the New Deal, a book she had spent nine
years researching. Her goal was to look to history to see
how a heroine of the past, Frances Perkins, had helped the
country deal with financial calamity and how, exactly, Perkins
had created the social safety net that will minimize the
damage to Americans today.
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Susan F. Feiner holds a joint position at the University
of Southern Maine in the departments of Women and Gender
Studies and Economics. She was a founding member of the
International Association of Feminist Economics and a member
of the original editorial board of the award-winning journal
Feminist Economics. Her research interests include
feminist political economy, critical perspectives in economic
education, and the ideological functions of economics. From
1985 through 1998 Feiner directed numerous content-based
curriculum development projects aimed at improving the treatment
of diversity in economics education. This work, funded by
the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation,
created an international movement to better integrate questions
of race and gender into economics education. Her most recent
book, Liberating Economics: feminist perspectives on
families, work, and globalization was published by the
University of Michigan Press in 2004. It was named an "Outstanding
Academic Title" by the American Library Association.
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Former chief of planning and legislation for the National
Park Service north atlantic region, Sarah Peskin has guided
the preservation and interpretation of many nationally significant
historic places and managed major new facility projects
from concept to operation. A graduate of Smith College,
she holds a master s degree in urban planning from New York
University and was a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University.
From 1979-90 she was planning director of the Lowell Historic
Preservation Commission, the public/private entity that
helped develop Lowell National Historical Park. From 1990-2009
she did feasibility studies and worked on legislation to
establish new areas such as Weir Farm National Historic
Site, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park,
Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, Erie Canalway
National Heritage Corridor, New Bedford Whaling National
Historical Park and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum
National Historic Site. She led the recent planning effort
for the Schoodic section of Acadia National Park where a
navy base was transformed into an educational campus to
serve multiple audiences. Award-winning projects she managed
include the Mogan Cultural Center, Boarding House Park,
and the Lowell Park Trolley System. She wrote Cultural Tourism:
Where Culture and Economy Meet (Boston Foundation, 2004)
and America s Special Landscapes: The Heritage Area Phenomenon
(Ferrara, 2001). She has recently retired from the National
Park Service to spend most of her time at her home in Walpole,
Maine, just across the Damariscotta River from the Perkins
Homestead.
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Educated at Northfield School and Barnard College, Gretel
Porter spent six years living in West Bengal, India, raising
her family. She returned to the United States in 1969 and
worked as a labor organizer, becoming a fierce advocate
for Health & Safety while working eight years in the coke
ovens at U.S. Steel in Gary, Indiana. In 1985 she developed
Odyssey Tours, a deluxe outbound travel company based in
Los Angeles, California that focused on cultural immersion
at unusual destinations throughout Asia. This led to Porter's
work with the Center for Responsible Tourism and international
campaigns to end child-sex tourism and the trafficking of
women and children. More recently as a resident of Maine,
Porter served as personal secretary to Susanna Wilson Coggeshall,
Frances Perkins' daughter, from 1998 to 2003 assisting with
much of the ongoing correspondence that dealt with Frances
Perkins' history and legacy.
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Christopher Irvine Rice is principal designer for Designs
for Native Landscapes. He holds a Master of Arts degree
from the Conway School of Landscape Design and a BA in Journalism
from the University of Maine at Orono. Inspired by the complexity
and random beauty found in environmentally sound landscapes
which are native to a region, Christopher has worked developing
landscapes for non-profits and residential clients while
living in midcoast Maine with his partner, Tomlin Coggeshall,
since 1995. Formerly a commercial interior designer and
conservation commissioner in Massachusetts, he's currently
treasurer of his local historical society in Newcastle and
pleased to be a founding member of the Frances Perkins Center.
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Leah W. Sprague is a retired justice of the Massachusetts
Trial Court. She is a graduate of Brown University and Boston
University School of Law, and completed the program for
Senior Executives in Massachusetts State Government at the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
She has been in legal practice for 34 years, specializing
in litigation and health law. She previously served as a
Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General and was Assistant
Commissioner and General Counsel to the Massachusetts Department
of Public Welfare during the administration of Governor
Michael S. Dukakis. In that latter period, she served on
the Executive Board of the American Association of Public
Welfare Attorneys. She currently resides in Newcastle, Maine,
where she is writing a book on women in the judiciary.
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Dr. Wilson is a geologist with over 30 years of experience
in the energy industry and academia. After beginning her
career at Shell Oil Company as an exploration geologist,
she established her own company, Methane Resources Group,
in 1981 engaging in both domestic and international petroleum
project development. Since 2000, Dr. Wilson has redirected
her interests towards education. She currently teaches academic
courses and lectures to organizations and community groups
in both geology and in the broader field of global energy,
generating interest and understanding, across disciplines,
in energy issues, environmental concerns and economic growth
in a world of diverse cultures, emerging markets, and economic
disparity. She has served on a variety of profit and non-profit
boards including Mount Holyoke College and The Boppy Company.
In Maine she is currently a member of the Advisory Council
of The Camden Conference in Camden and a board member of
the Frances Perkins Center in Newcastle.
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Joyce M. Clements currently serves as a Senior Principal
Investigator, Historical Archaeology, for Gray & Pape, Providence,
Rhode Island. Her research interests include women's history,
archaeological theory, feminist methods and theories, New
England archaeology, and the history and archaeology of
Native American women. Clements also is interested in connections
between health and the environment, and served as the President
of the Maine Breast Cancer Coalition during her brief residence
in Maine. She has taught anthropology, archaeology, and
women's studies and frequently presents her research at
local, national, and international conferences. Clements'
support for the Frances Perkins center is a natural outgrowth
of her interest in justice and equity, and the outstanding
woman who brought those issues to American consciousness.
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Tracy Cooley has been working on the behalf of at risk families
for over 30 years. She has worked in the early care and
education and domestic violence fields as an administrator,
practitioner, trainer, and consultant. Ms.Cooley was the
Director of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence
from 1990-2001. From 2001- 2006 she was a Policy Associate
at the Muskie School of Public Service, Institute for Child
and Family Policy at the University of Southern Maine where
she co-authored the Safe Families Safe Homes curriculum.
Since 1990, she has maintained a private consulting practice,
T.Cooley and Associates, offering the implementation of
the Safe Families Safe Homes Project across the country.
She provides technical assistance to practitioners, state
domestic violence coalitions, state and federal agencies,
and national organizations. Cooley recently joined the staff
at Maine Kids-Kin, a statewide program that supports grandparents
who are raising their grandchildren.
Ms. Cooley has been an activist for social justice since
her youth. During her college years she started the first
women's center at Nasson College. She served for ten years
on the board of the National Network to End Domestic Violence.
Her recent board tenure is with Maine Initiatives, a foundation
for social change.
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Carla Dickstein is Senior Vice-President at Coastal Enterprises,
Inc. (CEI), a Community Development Finance Institution
(CDFI) based in Wiscasset, Maine. For the past 15 years
she has overseen CEI's work on research and policy development,
including green industries and employment opportunities,
rural development and entrepreneurship and predatory mortgage
lending and foreclosures. In 2006 Carla coauthored a study
of subprime mortgages and predatory lending, which led to
Maine passing a strong antipredatory lending law in 2007.
Prior to coming to CEI she was on the faculty at West Virginia
University's Regional Research Institute and the West Virginia
University Extension Service. Carla sits on a number of
nonprofit and government boards and committees including
Maine's Citizen Trade Commission, the Engage Maine steering
committee, and the Research Advisory Board to the Community
Affairs Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
She holds a B.A. from Smith College, a Masters in Planning
from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in City and
Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Historian June Hopkins received her Ph. D. from Georgetown
in 1997. Her biographical study of her grandfather's social
work career from 1912 through the Great Depression, Harry
Hopkins: Sudden Hero, Brash Reformer, was published
by St. Martin's Press in 1999 and Jewish first wife,
divorced: The Selected Letters and Papers of Ethel Gross
and Harry Hopkins, co-edited with Allison Giffen was
published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2003. Hopkins has
been a professor of American history at Armstrong Atlantic
State University in Savannah, Georgia, since 1998 and has
been head of the history department for the past four years.
She is now working on a history of World War II and the
relationship between Winston Churchill and Harry Hopkins.
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Mark A. Peterson, with a Ph.D. in political science from
The University of Michigan, is Professor of Public Policy
and Political Science, and former department chair, in the
Department of Public Policy at the UCLA School of Public
Affairs. His previous faculty appointments were in Government
at Harvard University and Public Affairs, Political Science,
and Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. Peterson
is a scholar of American national institutions, focusing
on the interactions among the presidency, Congress, and
interest groups, as well as on national health care policy
making and Medicare reform. His publications include Legislating
Together: The White House and Capital Hill from Eisenhower
to Reagan (Harvard). As a participant in the Annenberg Institutions
of American Democracy Project, he co-chaired the Commission
on the Executive Branch and co-edited the volume it produced
on the politics and performance of the presidency and bureaucracy,
Institutions of American Democracy: The Executive Branch
(Oxford), which won the Richard E. Neustadt Award for the
best reference on the presidency. He was also a co-author
of the Annenberg's project book exploring public and elite
opinion on the performance of American institutions, Institutions
of American Democracy: A Republic Divided (Oxford). Peterson
is on the Council of the American Political Science Association,
serves on four national advisory committees (chairing one)
for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is past editor of
the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, and has
been a guest scholar at The Brookings Institution. As an
American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow
he served as a legislative assistant for Health Policy to
Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD). He is a founding member of the
core team of the Blue Sky Health Initiative, which seeks
to transform the health and health care system in the United
States. An elected member of the National Academy of Social
Insurance, he served on its Study Panel on Medicare and
Markets, and he is a recipient of an Investigator Award
in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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Chellie Pingree is from North Haven, Maine, an island town
of 350 people twelve miles off the coast, where she worked
as a farmer and a small business owner. She was elected
to the Maine State Senate in 1992 and, in 1996, was chosen
by her peers to be the Maine Senate Majority Leader.
As a state senator, she fought for economic and social
justice, taking on powerful adversaries--most notably the
pharmaceutical lobby. Pingree sponsored one of the nation's
first prescription drug pricing bills, MaineRx. After a
legal fight that led all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court,
the bill became law, and has since been a model for states
around the country working to lower prescription drug prices.
Pingree also sponsored the successful "Parents as Scholars"
program, a national model for welfare reform, which continues
to help working Maine parents gain access to education to
help them achieve a better life for their families. She
led successful efforts to protect Maine's environment, for
corporate accountability, to protect workers, to promote
a women's right to choose, and in support of Maine's small
businesses. As a state senator, Pingree was also a founding
member of the Maine Economic Growth Council. Pingree's leadership
in Maine politics led to numerous international appointments.
She traveled to Hungary as an Eisenhower Exchange Fellow,
served as a member of the White House delegation to observe
elections in Bosnia, and was a member of a U.S. delegation
to Northern Ireland, working with women political leaders
there.
From 2003 to 2007, Pingree served as the National President
and CEO of Common Cause, a non-partisan citizen activist
group with nearly 300,000 members and 35 state chapters.
Common Cause's mission is to help citizens make their voices
heard in the political process and to hold their elected
leaders accountable to the public interest.
In 2008, Pingree was elected to Congress from Maine's 1st
Congressional District--the first woman elected to Congress
from that District. It also marks the first time in American
history that women make up the majority of a state's Congressional
Delegation.
Pingree has three grown children. Her eldest, Hannah Pingree,
is the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.
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Robert B. Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University
of California at Berkeley. He is the author of twelve books,
among them the best-sellers The Work of Nations and
Locked in the Cabinet, and, his most recent, Supercapitalism.
He has served in three national administrations, most recently
as Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. In that
capacity he shepherded the Family and Medical Act through
Congress, as well as the Pension Protection Act and the
School-to-Work Act, and he laid the groundwork for the Workforce
Development Act. He also led a national campaign against
sweatshops, secured safer workplaces, and expanded opportunities
for job retraining to millions of American workers.
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Born in Boston, in 1931, Neil was educated in Brookline
schools and was graduated from Phillips Academy Andover,
then Yale with a BA, then Coulmbia Journalism with an MS.
Highlights of work experience, 6 years as a Special Assistant
to Governor Kenneth M. Curtis, then 16 years as a Democratic
State Representative in Maine. Neil has authored some 14
books and he has won several awards, including the Neal
W. Allen Award for History writing from the Maine Historical
Society, the Constance Carlson Award of the Maine Humanities
Council and a Maine Writers and Publishers award for the
best non-fiction. Neil has been on the boards of various
organizations, both in Maine and in other parts of the country,
including chairman of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network,
the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, the Seacoast
Shipyard Association (supporting the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard,
the Lighthouse Corporation of Bar Harbor, the Katahdin Institute,
and chair of the Development Committee of the National Tropical
Botanical Garden of Hawaii and one-time vice-chairman of
the board of the University of New England and board member
of the Heller School of Social work at Brandeis University.
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Nancy Teel is Professor of English and Interim Dean of Liberal
Arts at Roxbury Community College in Boston. She has taught
composition and literature for more than twenty years and
has been a college administrator for two years. She has
an
undergraduate degree in English literature from Saint Mary's
College and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Cornell University.
Beyond the classroom, her interests include human rights,
world peace and globalization. In her spare time she enjoys
spending time with family, gardening, boating and working
on old houses.
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