DANVILLE - Lynn Yeakel, director of the Institute for Women's Health and Leadership, at the College of Medicine at Drexel University, will present VISION 2020 at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, March 31, at the Danville Elks, Route 11.
In 2010, Yeakel launched VISION 2020, a decade-long national initiative to change the face of equality through shared leadership among women and men by the centennial anniversary of women's right to vote in 2020.
Yeakel's presentation is sponsored by the Columbia County Democratic Women's Caucus. However, the event is non-political, and open to all, female and male.
Yeakel's advocacy for women continues to underscore her life's work. She ran for the U.S. Senate in 1992 (known as the "Year of the Woman"), and was subsequently named Mid-Atlantic regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Clinton. In that role, she served on a national committee to implement the Federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Prior to entering public service, she founded and served as chief executive of the first and largest women's funding federation in the nation.
At the institute, Yeakel created and leads a program that provides health education to underserved communities, established a scholarship fund for minority women studying medicine and developed VISION 2020. She is a past president or chair of many local and national non-profit organizations, and works as an adviser to the Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, and to the Center for the Advancement of Girls at the Agnes Irwin School. Her autobiographical book, "A Will and a Way," was published in 2010.
Among the many honors she has received are the Lucretia Mott Award, Pennsylvania's Citizen Action Award and being named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania. Recently, she received the John Gardner Award from Common Cause and a lifetime achievement award from the Red Cross of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
For more information or to make a reservation, contact Mary Ann Dalkiewicz at 784-0520. The deadline for reservations is Tuesday.