MS. FORD: All that wonderful buzz is one of the nicest things about NAPSG. I know you all are so glad to see each other, and it's wonderful, great to hear all the buzz and all the excitement and reconnection, but we are going to now have the privilege of hearing our keynote speaker, and she's going to be introduced to us by Ralph Davison.

Sunday, February 25, 2007. Dr. Johnnetta Cole, "Holding Up Half the Sky: Girls and Women in Leadership."

MR. DAVISON: I cannot tell you how pleased I am to be able to introduce to you Dr. Johnnetta Cole. We tried to get Dr. Cole to address this group last year in Charleston, but getting on her dance card is not an easy thing. We persevered and we got her here this year, and I know you're not going to be disappointed with what you hear.

Dr. Cole is the 14th president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro. To give you some perspective on what that number 14 means, Bennett College was founded in 1873. It is located in Greensboro, North Carolina, where, incidentally, the sun shines like this even in the winter, too. It's a wonderful place.

Her career as a college and university professor and administrator spans over three decades. She made history in 1987 by becoming the first African-American woman to serve as president of Spelman College. In May of 2004 she became the first African-American to serve as chair of the Board of United Way of America. Dr. Cole is president emerita of Spelman College and professor emerita of Emory University, from which she retired as Presidential Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Women's Studies, and African-American Studies.

She began her own college studies at Fisk University and completed her undergraduate degree at Oberlin. She earned both a master's and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Northwestern University. She's the author of numerous publications for scholarly and general audiences. Her most recent publication is a book coauthored with Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall entitled Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African-American Communities. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Anthropological Association.

Dr. Cole has a long and distinguished career as an educator and humanitarian. Her work as a college professor and president, her published works, her speeches, and her community service consistently address issues of racial, gender, and all other forms of discrimination. She serves on the board of the Carter Center, the National Visionary Leadership Project, and the United Way of Greater Greensboro. She also serves on the board of directors of Merck & Company, Incorporated, and the Atlanta Falcons. If you knew her, that would make sense.

Dr. Cole consults on diversity matters with Citigroup. She's a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, the Links, Incorporated, and National Council of Negro Women. She holds 50 honorary degrees, and she has received more awards than I'm going to read to you this evening. This is a woman who parties with Oprah. In fact, do you remember seeing on television this big party where Oprah invited -- how many women were there -- influential African-American women from all over the country? Dr. Cole was there. And I think you even got a pair of those earrings, didn't you, Johnnetta? You didn't get your pair? I want to know about that.

She is also a woman who dines with presidents. I remember one evening when my wife, Jean, and I tried to get her to come to dinner at our home, and discovered that our competition was the White House in Washington. She was there and couldn't join us.

And presidents come to dine with her. As heads of school, we all have been involved in fundraising activities, but I doubt that any of us has done what she did a year or so ago at Bennett College, when she invited several people -- Jean and I were privileged to be there -- to come to a gala where she sat on a platform and on her right side was Bob Dole, and on her left was Bill Clinton. And they had a little dialogue and raised an awful lot of money for Bennett College for Women.

I'm proud to say among all these things that Dr. Cole is a personal friend. I retired after 20 years of heading Greensboro Day School back in June, and Johnnetta was the woman who gave the invocation at our big gala event, and she chose that event to announce her engagement to a dear friend of mine of 20 years, and they're going to be married in June.

This is a woman of mission. And she's not simply a woman whose life reflects her values and her principles and her conviction. She is a woman whose life is her values, her principles, and her conviction. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Johnnetta Cole.

DR. COLE: My sisters and my brothers all. Good evening. I have addressed you as my sisters and my brothers in the same spirit in which brother Vincent Redhouse led us through that extraordinarily meaningful blessing. I'm also reminded of words that come from the Sioux, who say that in all beings and all things we shall be relatives. I use the language of sisters and brothers in addressing you to affirm a fundamental lesson that I learned as a young anthropology student, namely that kinship is not so much about biology as it is about shared beliefs. And surely here, in this place, at this moment, are folk gathered who truly believe the Native American saying, that women -- and before they are women, they are girls -- hold up half of the sky. And believing this Native American saying, you and I then have the responsibility to help others to accept it and to work in the interests of full gender equity.

I want to thank you for inviting me to serve as the keynote speaker for this conference. But I'm a truth-telling woman, and I'm going to tell you that I simply had no choice. You see, once brother Ralph Davison gets an idea in his head, he will pursue it, and he got on my case like white on rice -- or in the interests of diversity, I might say black on Cole -- until finally, I said, "All right, all right, already, I give up."

But whether Ralph had asked me to do this or not, surely I should, because the mission of your organization and the mission of Bennett College for Women is so very much the same. But it is a joy to be here as a tribute to a very, very deep sisterly relationship with Jean and a brotherly relationship with Ralph Davison.

I want to begin this talk on educating girls and women for leadership by telling you a story. It's a story of my first day in first grade. I grew up in the intensely segregated circumstances of Jacksonville, Florida, in the 1940s and 1950s, and so my first day in school was in a colored school. And I remember being awfully nervous; in fact, really scared, and so I was holding onto my best friend's hand as if life depended upon that grip.

We made it into the first grade classroom, sat down, and on the command of Miss Buddy Vance, our first grade teacher, that we should all rise and give our names, the process began. And I listened, as my nerves increased their activity, until it was finally my turn. Reluctantly, I let go of Beebee's hand and with my head bowed and my voice probably barely audible, I said, "I'm Johnnetta Betsch."

Miss Vance, who was rather vertically challenged, barely taller than most of those students, came in front of me, pulled herself up to her fullest height, and said, "Johnnetta, look up. Look me straight in the eyes. Speak up. Never again mumble your words. You are in school and this is where we make leaders."

That was a pretty heavy rap to put on a poor little first-grader. But like you, that incredible experience with a teacher has never left me.

I want to tell you yet another story. My parents decided that my sister and I should not continue in that public school, and we went off to an all-girls' school, a private school in Jacksonville, Florida, run by the Methodist Church. All of the girls were black; all of the teachers were women and white, save one. Well, I want you to know, by this time I'm in middle school, and I have taken Ms. Vance's words to heart. I'm no longer mumbling. I'm no longer looking down. I'm a leader. And so I gathered together my girls to tell them what we're going to do in our Latin class. And I said, "Tomorrow when Miss Morse comes in, this is what we're going to say."

Now, let me tell you about Miss Morse. For some reason, perhaps because I was so tall as a youngster, I was conscious of these vertically challenged teachers. Miss Morse was also short, white, and with those very tight curls that were tinted blue. So I said to my girls, "Now, tomorrow when Miss Morse comes into class, here's what we're going to do. We're going to sing, but softly. And don't move your lips very much. Just sing. 'Latin, Latin, dead as can be, first it killed the Romans and now it's killing me.'"

Miss Morse ignored us. But the second day, right on my signal, my girls did it again. And this time, Miss Morse drew herself up to her full five feet, two inches and said, "You girls stop it."

Well, I thought this was getting a little tense, so I called my girls together after class and I said, "Now, listen. Miss Morse is getting a little agitated. So tomorrow when we go into class, this is what we do. We don't say the words. We just go, 'Hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm hmmm.'"

This time, Miss Morse had had it. And I will never ever forget her words. She said, "You girls listen to me. You will learn Latin. Not because it is a language, as you say, that dead men spoke. You will learn Latin so that you will always know that, as Negro girls, you can learn anything."

Miss Morse and Miss Vance were in the business of creating leaders. Now, leadership is clearly one of those notions that, while important or for reference, is rather elusive to define. Perhaps we're most conscious of what leadership is when it is absent. Debates continue to reign over whether or not the ability to influence and direct others is something one is born with or one acquires. Perhaps you remember that line in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, "Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great. Some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

Let me have a go with those words, and say this to our girl children and our young women: Be not afraid to be leaders. We don't know if some of you were born to be leaders, but we are committed to helping each of you to become one. And surely the world will be a better place if leadership is thrust upon more and more of you.

However it is that girls and women become leaders -- and in a moment I'll tell you how I really think that it happens -- there is more and more evidence, to use the words of a recent article in Psychology Today, that women make better leaders. An analysis of 45 leadership studies found that the best "bosses" are inspirational mentors who encourage underlings to develop their abilities and creatively change their organizations. Women, on average, are more likely than men to enact this transformational style. Men are more likely to use a transactional management style dealing out punishments for poor performance and rewards for good behavior. I want to assure you that I know that this ain't genetic. You know women, as I do, who indeed use a transactional style and I trust that among the righteous brothers here are many who lead in a transformational way.

This article dares to go forward to say that women, when given the chance for leadership, are not only doing it just as well as men, but given the circumstances in which we find ourselves in today's world, perhaps we can even say they are doing it better. In the political arena, of course, we are seeing very interesting developments. Around the world, women are now the heads of state in nations such as Chile, Jamaica, and in Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became the first woman to ever head an African state.

When we look at the United States of America, we see a woman not for the first time in the position of running for the presidency of the United States. There have been others. Shall we never ever forget Shirley Chisholm? But we do see a woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, certainly making a strong run for that big house that is white. For the first time in the position of leadership in the House of Representatives in Congress, one can only say, I would hope, whether Republican or Democrat, "You go, Nancy Pelosi."

There's no question about it. Today there are far more women in leadership roles in all public office, the professions, and -- are you ready -- even at Harvard. Yes. We all need to say, "Drew Faust, you go, girl."

But with these exciting and overdue firsts, let us be clear, there are still countless leadership roles where women are not welcome, just as there are countless leadership posts where people of color need not apply. And heaven help us, twofers -- that is, folk who are black and a woman -- or our Latina or Native American or Asian-American sisters.

Now, it doesn't take the proverbial rocket scientist to figure out why. It's racism, sexism, both of which are unfortunately quite alive and thriving throughout our world. But here is the truly great news. Those of us in academics, whether it is pre-K or public or private schools, whether it is colleges or universities or post baccalaureate institutions, have the power. We have the power to help, to nurture, and to sustain leadership among girls and women. I have said that we can help to do this because clearly, the making of girl leaders and women leaders is best done when it is an effort to which many contribute: Parents, other family members, community folks, faith-based organizations, not-for-profit, and civic organizations.

But let's focus here on what we can do as educators and administrators in the world of education to develop, inspire, and sustain girl and women leaders. First of all, isn't it crystal clear we must start early? And of course, we as educators do not get the chance to start early enough, for by the time the girl reaches our schools, she has probably already received a host of messages about what she cannot do -- be a physicist or a philosopher, an engineer or an alto saxophone jazz musician. She's been warned that she will have to choose between having a family and having a career. And for many of our girls, they have already been influenced by their peers in the media to crave a certain body type that requires destructive eating habits. She's no doubt seen images and heard lyrics in the media that are profoundly misogynist.

Thus, the task of those of us who are dedicated to making female leaders is to start early to deliver counter messages. We must effectively deliver message after message after message. For example, we must say, "But of course you can do the sciences and math and engineering and computer science. Look at women's colleges where indeed women do science and math. Look at your sisters at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the largest number of majors on our campus are in biology."

But we must not only deliver these messages. We have to have in place the kind of instruction and support systems that will assist our girl children to excel in what we call the STEM fields, science, technology, engineering, and math. And of course, we must use every opportunity to provide internships, research opportunities, shadowing experiences that show our girls that they, too, can fly in these fields that were once declared off limits for them.

Now, clearly, the making of leaders in your schools, just as at Bennett College for women, requires the presence of role models. What a contradiction it would be to call for our girls and young women to strive to be leaders when this message is being delivered in an environment where females are not in leadership positions. There's something else that we must do if we are to instruct and inspire and serve as models for girls and women in our schools. We must teach them not only to tolerate diversity, but to celebrate it and indeed, to promote it. Of course, there's a moral case for promoting diversity and building an inclusive environment. It's simply the right thing to do, to provide an equal opportunity for qualified people of all races and ethnicities, classes, religions, sexual orientations, abilities, and disciplines. In the world of business, the phrase is used, "the economic imperative" or "the business case." That is, for businesses to compete well in this diverse world, they need a diverse work force who produce goods and services for diverse customers.

In the world that you and I work in, I refer to the educational imperative and it is this: That we cannot truly educate our students to be the leaders that they can be if we only teach history and never herstory, if we lift up heroes, but fail to acknowledge sheroes, if we teach and learn and act as if the world belongs to straight, white, fully able, Christian, upper-middle-class and upper-class guys. And then the rest of us will just have to keep doing our best to find a way to make it into their world.

The young women of today need to be taught and challenged to find a way to confront the power and privilege, the power and privilege that propels racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ablism, any form of bigotry and discrimination. But our young 'uns, as I affectionately call the young, also need to discover the joy, the joy in living in an inclusive environment where all of the folks that the good Lord, she, made are respected. Once again, what a contradiction it is if we teach this message but our own schools are not places where diversity thrives and an inclusive environment is viewed as just the way it's supposed to be.

The final point I want to make in terms of what we must provide to girls and women, in my view, if we want to prepare them to be leaders in their communities, their nation, and their world, is this. We must teach them and show them that at its core, leadership is about service. Dr. Martin Luther King once put it, "Life's most persistent question is: What are you doing for others?"

Or to use the words of one of my sheroes, the great African-American educator, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, "It's fine to climb to the very top. Go on," she would say. "Climb to the top. But you must lift others as you climb."

Of course, preaching and teaching the message of community service but failing to practice it is the height of hypocrisy, and that is why, fortunately, in so many of our schools that you head, that you administer, young girls are not urged to wait to engage in community service. They are encouraged to practice it while they are in school.

It's time now for me to bring closure on this talk, and I want to do so once again by using a story. You know, I come from several story-telling communities, and I know the value of story-telling. First of all, as an African-American, I come from the community that traces its lineage back to the great griots of West Africa, those individuals who, before reading and writing were a part of daily life, told the story of the people and encouraged the best of values to be instilled in the young and practiced by the old. I also come from a community of women folk, and we women do tell our stories. I'm convinced that at the heart of the so-called second wave of the women's movement was the fact that we began to tell our stories to each other, and amazingly, we found though we differed, by race and ethnicity and class and other attributes, we had the same story. And finally, I come from the community of educators, and how well you know the power of story-telling. Even if it is to have your students understand the second theory of thermodynamics in physics, find a story associated with it, and it will be learned.

And so I'm going to tell this story, knowing full well that of all the things I have said, this is probably what you will remember the longest. It's a story that will answer the question: Who has the responsibility to teach girls and young women to be effective leaders? It's a story that was a favorite of yet another of my sheroes, Fanny Lou Hamer.

Fanny Lou Hamer loved to tell the story at the end of a talk to emphasize who needed to do the work that she had laid out. And as you no doubt remember, Fanny Lou Hamer was one of many, many children of a sharecropping family in Mississippi. She was not fortunate to have formal education, but a wise person she was. Fanny Lou Hamer knew that one of the most important rights that anyone who was an American citizen had to have was the right to vote, and so during those days of intense segregation in the South, she would lead black people up the steps of the statehouse to register to vote. You probably remember her most as a woman who once said, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."

But unlike many of us who often say that and do little about it, Fanny Lou Hamer went on to be a great organizer. Against her back came Billy clubs, water hoses that would push her to the ground. Dogs would bite at her ankles and she simply organized for the right of black Americans to vote. She went on to organize a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Well, here's Fanny Lou Hamer's story. And the last line of the story says very clearly who has the responsibility at least to help, at least to help, to educate girls and women to be effective leaders. She tells the story about not a group of girls, but a group of boys who one day decided to play hooky from school. And they became bored shortly after the decision not to go to school, and looked around for something to do to entertain themselves. They found a bird and decided just to mess with that poor bird, and they did, almost to within an inch of the bird's life. But then they were bored with that.

So the ringleader of these boys said, "I have got an idea. Why don't we go up the road a piece and mess with that old lady? She thinks she knows everything. We're going to prove to her that she doesn't."

"How are we going to do that?" said one of the youngsters.

"Well," said the ringleader, "see this bird? When we get to the old lady, I'm going to say, 'Old lady, old lady, this bird that I hold behind my back -- is it dead or is it alive?'

"Now, if the old lady says, 'The bird, hmmm, why, it's dead,' I'm going to release my hand and the bird will fly away. But if to my question, 'Old lady, is the bird dead or alive,' she says, 'The bird is alive,' I'm going to crush it.'"

Hey! They did their high fives with their fists that they could stump the old lady. So they found her. And with that incivility that characterizes some of our youngsters -- clearly not all -- the ringleader said, "Yo, old lady. Are you going to answer this question?"

And with that warmth and that compassion and that decency that so often characterizes our elders, the old lady said, "Why, my son, I will try."

And so he put the question to her, "Old lady, old lady, this bird that I hold behind my back -- is it dead or is it alive?"

And the old lady took her time. She thought about the question. And then she said, "Hmmm, the bird -- why, it's in your hands. That's the answer."

Educating girls and women to be leaders. It's in your hands, and in mine. Thank you.

MR. DAVISON: Johnnetta, I love what you stand for and I love that you came here to Tucson to stand for it in front of all of us. Thank you so much. I have a personal gift that I want to give to you. Don't come up here. I'm going to take it down to you. But thank you so much for being with us tonight.

Bruce, do you have anything else?

MR. GALBRAITH: Yes, we do.

MS. FORD: I just want to say thank you also on behalf of NAPSG, Dr. Cole. Your stories are inspiring and instructive, reminding all of us of Miss Vance, Miss Morse, all of whom are in our schools, are in all of us, but reminding us that our business really is creating leaders. Thank you so much. That was just wonderful.

MR. GALBRAITH: And thank you, Ralph, for making that contact. Dr. Cole was going to speak to us a year ago, but she had a meeting I think of the American Red Cross board that she chairs, and she said, "This will fulfill my obligation to Ralph Davison, I'll be there," and we are so glad you came. Thank you.

All of our meetings tomorrow are in this room. The breakfast is outside tomorrow. If you haven't registered, you didn't get either your nametag or your drink tickets, so please see me in the back of the room. The reception and dinner follow. The reception is outside, as are the buffet lines. There are two-sided buffet lines. This is a cookout that was going to be outside, and we're going to be able to eat inside in the rooms right here. They're cooking steaks and there's barbecued chicken on the buffet lines. So enjoy yourself for the rest of the evening, see your new friends, greet our new members.

Thank you. We are adjourned.