'Women, Politics, and Power' to be subject of talk

"Women, Power, and Politics" will be the subject of this spring's Karen Coburn '63 Lecture in Women's Studies at Skidmore, to be presented Tuesday, April 14, by public-television producer Lesley Norman '79.

Free and open to the public, the presentation will begin at 6 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium with a screening of the 60-minute special Women, Power, and Politics that aired this season on the PBS newsmagazine Now on PBS. A question-and-answer session will follow.

The program features Now correspondent Maria Hinojosa interviewing women leaders here and abroad on the subject of how women in politics have changed the U.S. and the world. Among Hinojosa's subjects are President Michelle Bachelet of Chile (the first woman leader in Latin America whose husband did not precede her as president) and former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. The program also visits Rwanda, where after years of genocide, women now make up nearly half the nation's parliament, and Manhattan, where high-school girls compete in a high-stakes debate tournament. For more information about Women, Politics, and Power and links to additional resources on the topic, go to the Now Web site.

Norman is vice president and chief operating officer of JumpStart Productions, which produces Now, the Emmy Award-winning series, in association with WNET TV-13 New York; she is also the program's executive in charge. Before joining JumpStart in 2004, Norman was vice president of David Grubin Productions and part of the Emmy Award-winning team that produced The Secret Life of the Brain for PBS and the Peabody Award-winning Napoleon. Earlier, she spent 12 years at WGBH Boston, where she worked for Nova and also managed the Peabody Award-winning series Africans in America. Norman has worked on productions for the Discovery Channel, CNBC, and CNN and served as a judge for the International Emmy award. She has a bachelor's degree in government from Skidmore and a master's degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University.

The annual Coburn Lecture at Skidmore honors Karen Levin Coburn, a member of the Skidmore Class of 1963 and the co-author of Letting Go: A Parent's Guide to Understanding the College Years.