This content was published: November 6, 2002. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
Jill Ker Conway to Speak at PCC Cascade Campus
Photos and story by James Hill
PORTLAND, Ore. – Jill Ker Conway, former president, and first female president, of Smith College and best-selling author, will lecture at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 20 in Room 122 of Terrell Hall at Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus, 705 N. Killingsworth. Admission is free, but donations will be accepted to benefit Project Independence, a program to assist single parents and displaced homemakers who return to college. The lecture will focus on the third installment of her memoirs, "A Woman’s Education: The Road from Coorain Leads to Smith College,"(Vintage Books, 2002). The new paperback edition of the book will be available at the lecture. Jill Ker Conway was born in Hillston, New South Wales, Australia, and grew up on a sheep farm. The story of her early life is known to many who have read her best-selling memoir, "The Road From Coorain,"(1989). She is a graduate of the University of Sydney and earned her doctorate in history at Harvard. In 1975, she became the president of Smith College and served for ten years.Conway currently serves on the board of directors of a number of major American companies, including Merrill Lynch, Colgate-Palmolive and Nike. She also serves on numerous other university and charitable boards. Most recently, she was named chair of Lend Lease Corporation, a global real estate investment, development and project management company operating on six continents with more than $44 billion in assets. "I think much has changed for women in the workplace, but the glass ceiling is still there,"Conway said of the opportunities for women in the workplace. "If you go to low-income countries you see that nothing has changed for women outside of the elites, and that everything western feminists fought for still needs to be achieved in some appropriate and culturally meaningful fashion. I work on that as much as I work in corporate boardrooms."This event is co-sponsored by the Women’s Resource Center and the American Association of Women in Community Colleges (AAWCC). For more information, contact Linda Reisser (dean of student development) at 503-978-5307, or Linda Palmer (Cascade Women’s Resource Center coordinator) at 503-978-5633.
About James Hill
James G. Hill, an award-winning journalist and public relations writer, is the Director of Public Relations at Portland Community College. A graduate of Portland State University, James has worked as a section editor for the Newberg Graphic... more »