Shakow has founded two organizations to raise the political voice of young women — Running Start in 2007 and Women Under Forty Political Action Committee in 1999.
Where are you from?
I’m an actual D.C. native. … When I graduated from college, I worked in the Senate and the Clinton White House. I went to law school because I loved politics, not law, and while working as a lobbyist on the Hill, I noticed how few women of my generation were in leadership positions, especially in politics.
Why are there not more women?
Despite Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin and other strong women, we’re still not used to women as leaders, so little girls don’t grow up thinking they can be president. History shows us that political leaders are old and white and male.
How do you change that?
The idea is to train and inspire young women in political leadership, so they grow up knowing that they have an option to be a senator or a congresswoman. Girls need to know that if they want to change the world, politics is a powerful tool that women are not using enough.
How has it gone?
Politics is not that exciting or sexy to high school girls. At least that’s what we thought. In the second year, we had 300 girls apply for a 50-girl program. Then Obama and Hillary were duking it out with Sarah Palin, all of a sudden, every high school girl in the country wanted to come to our program. I got 500 letters a day at home. Finally the mailman said, ‘We need to talk.’ In the end we had 30,000 applications for our small program.
Now, we do programs around the country, and we work with college and young professional women as well as high school girls. We’re starting a program with just girls from D.C., Maryland and Virginia that we hope to hold this summer.
Note: Running Start’s fifth annual Women to Watch awards gala is May 11 at the National Press Club. For information, click here.
Scott McCabe
