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The Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership Recognizes Boston Women Leaders

Swanee Hunt, Liz Walker and Barbara Lee honored with award

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The Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership Recognizes Boston Women Leaders
Robin Young

CAMBRIDGE, MA (March 10, 2015) —The Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership presents Barbara Lee, Founder and President of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, Rev. Liz Walker, Co-founder of My Sister’s Keeper, Pastor of the Roxbury Presbyterian Church and Host of the Better Living Series on WCVB-TV and Ambassador Swanee Hunt, President, Hunt Alternatives and Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy, with the Eleanor Roosevelt Following in Her Footsteps Award on Wednesday, March 25, 2015 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at the Edward M. Pickman Concert Hall at the Longy School of Music. The Award celebrates and honors those individuals whose work continues Eleanor Roosevelt’s work for the causes she held dear: human rights, equality for all, preserving the environment, peace and social justice.

Swanee Hunt

Liz Walker

Barbara Lee

Since the inception of the Eleanor Roosevelt Following in Her Footsteps Award in 2005, 11 women across the country have been recognized for their impact on the human rights movement and public service. This year, Barbara Lee, will be presented with her award by Attorney General Maura Healey, Rev. Liz Walker will be given her award by Bob Lobel, colleague and former sportscaster for WBZ-TV, and Ambassador Swanee Hunt will receive her award from Rev. Gloria White- Hammond, M.D., Co-Pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Boston, MA, Executive Director of My Sister’s Keeper and a retired pediatrician from the South End Community Health Center.

“The Eleanor Roosevelt Following in Her Footsteps Award serves as an opportunity for the Val-Kill Partnership to engage people in our community and around the country to honor exceptional women making a difference in the lives of other women in their communities, across the country and around the globe,” said Carol Hillman Brookline resident and former Chair of the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership. “Our honorees this year have been tireless in their pursuit of advancing human rights and political power, particularly for women. It is an honor to recognize each of these exceptional women at this year’s event.”

Barbara Lee, a national leader in advancing women’s equality in American politics, founded and presently leads the Barbara Lee Political Office and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation. Since 1998, she has worked tirelessly to elect women nationwide. Through strategic advice, candidate training, direct support, and voter mobilization, she has helped elect every sitting Democratic woman governor and U.S. Senator. Through her Foundation’s nonpartisan research, she gives women candidates, at all levels, essential tools to meet the challenges of campaigning. She is the epitome of the causes Eleanor Roosevelt fought so hard for—women’s rights; political involvement; civil rights and human rights. Her support of women running for political office echoes Eleanor Roosevelt’s activities to open the Democratic Party to women and to support their political activism.

An award-winning television journalist, documentary film producer, and entrepreneur, Rev. Liz Walker is a humanitarian currently working in the war-torn country of Sudan. Her work to save the children of Sudan by developing, along with Rev. Dr. Gloria White-Hammond, My Sister’s Keeper, a Boston-based humanitarian group advocating for a girls school in South Sudan, today educates nearly 1,000 girls in the region. In 2005, she became an ordained minister. She is the founder and principal of The Walker Group LLC, Communications Specialists, focused on nonprofit capacity building and corporate public engagement. As the producer and host of the Better Living Health Series on WCVB TV she has had the opportunity to not only report on world problems, but as a humanitarian, independent film producer and motivational speaker, she participates in solving them. With her strong passion and commitment to human rights, Liz Walker has supported dozens of organizations and causes that have made the world more humane.

Former Ambassador to Austria, Swanee Hunt’s mission is to achieve gender parity, especially as a means to end war and rebuild societies, as well as to alleviate poverty and other human suffering. At Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Hunt is the Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy. She teaches “Inclusive Security,” exploring how women are systematically excluded from peace processes, the impact, and the policy steps needed to rectify the problem. At the Kennedy School, she is also core faculty at the Center for Public Leadership and senior advisor to The Initiative to Stop Human Trafficking in the Carr Center for Human Rights. Hunt has taught “The Choreography of Social Movements” at Harvard College and “Peacebuilding from the Ground Up” at Harvard Law School. An expert on domestic policy and foreign affairs, Hunt is president of Hunt Alternatives, through which she has committed more than $130 million in endowments and grants to provoking social change at local, national, and global levels. Swanee Hunt is being recognized for her tireless commitment to creating a more just society by supporting social movements and elevating the number of women in government in the US and abroad, and especially for her work in promoting human rights worldwide, (as did Eleanor Roosevelt).

Previous recipients of the award include: former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; former congresswoman and vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro; Boston environmentalist and philanthropist Cathy Douglas Stone; Brookline philanthropist and political activist Chobee Hoy; Judith Hope, founder of the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy in New York State; Jane Alexander, long-time supporter of the Partnership, distinguished actress who has played Eleanor Roosevelt in several films and on television, and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts; Jackie Jenkins-Scott, President of Wheelock College; and Ernestine Bradley, author and advocate for breast cancer survivors.

Ticket prices are: $125 for an individual ticket, $250 for entry to the event and a pre-event reception beginning at 5:30 p.m: student and young professional tickets are $35. The event will be held at The Edward M. Pickman Concert Hall at the Longy School of Music, 27 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA. For more information on sponsorships or to purchase tickets, visit: http://www.valkill.org or contact The McEvoy Associates at 212-228-7446 x15. All proceeds benefit The Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Partnership.