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Brilliant, Corporate Strategist

Brilliant, Corporate Strategist
Brilliant, Corporate Strategist

Indra Nooyi  (1955-)

Indra Nooyi, a business leader and strategic thinker, is widely considered to be one of the top CEOs in the world for her leadership of the global behemoth PepsiCo for 12 years. She was the first woman of color and first immigrant to head a Fortune 50 company. Under her leadership, the company increased its profitability while also working to improve environmental sustainability and the healthiness of its food offerings. Nooyi is also a major philanthropist. Her donation to her alma mater Yale School of Management makes her the school’s largest alumni donor and the first woman to have endowed a Chair at a top business school.

Indra Krisnamurthy was born in Madras (now called Chennai), India, on October 28, 1955. She grew up in a close family with two siblings, her parents, and her grandparents. Her father was a bank official, and her mother was a house wife. Nooyi’s family was middle class and, like most of their neighbors, devout Hindus and relatively conservative. Nooyi remains close to her family. Her mother  has lived with her in the US and features prominently in Nooyi’s stories. Her sister Chandrika is also a successful businesswoman as well as a Grammy-nominated musical artist. A brilliant student in high school, Nooyi developed interests considered unusual for girls in that time and place. In addition to excelling at her studies in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics, she competed on a cricket team and played guitar in a female rock band at Madras Christian College, from which she graduated in 1974 at the age of 18. She earned a spot at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, where she received her MBA in 1976.

After graduation, Nooyi began her career as a business strategist. Her first job was at a British textile firm. She then moved to a product manager role at Johnson & Johnson in Mumbai. There she was charged with introducing menstrual pads, Stayfree, to India. This was a challenging task since India banned  direct advertising for such products. Nooyi devised a successful workaround, directly marketing the products to female college students.

She became convinced, however, that she needed a more global business education and applied to Yale School of Management after reading about it in a magazine. Somewhat to her surprise— since “it was unheard of for a good, conservative, south Indian Brahmin girl” to go overseas on her own—her parents supported her decision when she was accepted. Nooyi arrived in Connecticut in 1978 determined to succeed, describing her identity as an immigrant woman as her  “biggest internal driver.”

Nooyi worked as a receptionist to make ends meet at Yale.  After graduating in 1980 at age 24 with a Master’s degree in Public and Private Management, she worked at Boston Consulting Group as a strategy consultant for six years. She married fellow consultant Raj K Nooyi in 1981. The two remain married and have two daughters.

In 1986, Nooyi moved to the telecommunications company Motorola, where she worked first as an internal consultant in the automotive team before pivoting to broader corporate planning.  In 1990, she switched firms again, this time to the Swiss machinery firm ABB where she led corporate strategy, including integrating diverse product divisions around a coherent overall plan. She developed a reputation as a strategic long-term thinker and a skillful communicator, and just 14 years after graduating from Yale she was wooed simultaneously for executive-level posts at two top global companies: PepsiCo and General Electric. She chose Pepsi, reportedly because the CEO there convinced her she would be able to exert real influence.

In 1994, at age 38, Nooyi began working at Pepsi, the company for which she would become famous for leading. Unlike many of her predecessors in the top job, she never worked in sales, instead focused from the beginning on long-term planning.  As she rose through the ranks at Pepsi, she played an instrumental role in shaping global strategy, including through acquiring and selling off subsidiary companies. She led the sale of Yum! Brands (which includes restaurants KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut) in 1997 and the acquisitions of Tropicana in 1998,Quaker Oats in 2001, and Gatorade, also in 2001. These acquisitions consolidated profits and tightened focus at PepsiCo to the core business of beverages and snacks.

In 2001, Nooyi was promoted to President and Chief Financial Officer. She pushed PepsiCo to adjust its business to meet what she saw as shifting consumer demand for healthier eating. She also pushed PepsiCo to acknowledge the need to be a good corporate citizen on  environmental issues, coining the term “Performance with a Purpose” as Pepsi’s new mantra. Named CEO in 2006, Nooyi led Pepsi for 12 years, during which time the company’s annual net profit more than doubled, growing from $2.7 billion to $6.5 billion. Her strategic guidance was largely a success, with Pepsi offering more low-calorie options and cutting the corporate carbon footprint through leaner packaging and the use of renewable energy.

A third pillar of “Performance with a Purpose” focused on retaining talent at the company, including through paid parental leave for men and women alike. Nooyi spoke candidly during her years as CEO of the unrealistic expectations placed on women executives who are also caregivers. She has acknowledged that her own support system included her mother, husband, and staff at PepsiCo. Nooyi instructed staff to give her daughter permission to play a video game when she called the office only after confirming that her homework and chores were completed.

In a recently published book, My Life in Full (2021), Nooyi focuses on the topic of work-life balance, admitting that there were many times when she felt that she fell short as a mother. On Valentine’s Day 2022, she published a note to her husband Raj sharing credit for her successes with him: “the truth is, there is no such thing as balancing work and family. It's a constant juggling act. And many times, it's the people around us — like our life partners — who make this juggling possible. It's a reminder that family isn't female. Family is family.”

After retiring from Pepsi, Nooyi continues to serve on a number of corporate and nonprofit boards. Her legacy as a brilliant thinker and corporate strategist will likely continue to grow.

Works Cited

“Pepsi CEO is Now Yale Management School’s ‘Most Generous’ Alumni Donor,” by Robert Hackett, FORTUNE magazine, January 12, 2016.  Accessed February 8, 2022. https://fortune.com/2016/01/12/pepsi-yale-alumni-donor-nooyi/

“Companies Like Ours Are Little Republics,” by Andrew Edgecliff-Johnson, Financial Times, October 22, 2021. Accessed February 12, 2022. https://www.ft.com/content/3c59db07-4516-427e-abe7-600f8bab3751

“PepsiCo’s CEO Was Right. Now What?” by Jennifer Reingold, Fortune, June 5, 2015. Accessed February 16, 2022.  https://fortune.com/2015/06/05/pepsico-ceo-indra-nooyi/

“Snacks for a Fat Planet: PepsiCo Takes Stock of the Obesity Epidemic,” by John Seabrook,The New Yorker,  May 9, 2011. Accessed February 8, 2022. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/16/snacks-for-a-fat-planet

“Why Pepsi CEO Indra K. Nooyi Can’t Have it All,” by Conor Friedersdorf. The Atlantic, July 1, 2014. Accessed February 8, 2022.  https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/why-pepsico-ceo-indra-k-nooyi-cant-have-it-all/373750/

“Profile of Indra Nooyi,” Financial Times, November 6, 2010. Accessed February 12, 2022.

How to Cite this page

MLA – Johnson, Arbora. “Indra Nooyi.” National Women’s History Museum, 2022. Date accessed.

Chicago – Johnson, Arbora. “Indra Nooyi.” National Women’s History Museum. 2022. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/indra-nooyi 

Image Credit: Jeff Bedford, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12566849

 

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Brilliant, Lifelong Political Strategist For Civil Rights

Brilliant, Lifelong Political Strategist For Civil Rights
Brilliant, Lifelong Political Strategist For Civil Rights

Heather Booth  (1945 - )

Heather Booth (born December 15, 1945) is an American civil rights activist, feminist, and political strategist who has been involved in activism for progressive causes. During her student years, she was active in both the civil rights movement and feminist causes. Since then she has had a career involving feminism, community organization, and progressive politics.

Early life and family

Booth's father, Jerome Sanford Tobis (1916–2012), was a physician who specialized in physical therapy and cardiac rehabilitation.[1][note 1] Her mother, Hazel Victoria Weisbard Tobis (1918–2002),[4] was a special education teacher.[5]: 104  Although Hazel Weisbard was her high school's valedictorian, her parents forbid her to accept a scholarship to attend college.[2] Once her three children were grown, she went back to college and obtained bachelor's and master's degrees.[6]

Booth was born in a military hospital in Brookhaven, Mississippi, on December 15, 1945, during a period in which her father was serving as an Army doctor.[5]: 104 [6] Soon after her birth, her family moved to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where she received her elementary education in P.S. 200 in the Bath Beach neighborhood. Later, she attended high school in Long Island's North Shore after her family had moved to that upscale area.[7] She has two brothers, David and Jonathan.[5]: 105  Booth grew up in a warm, loving, and supportive family. Her parents taught her the importance of recognizing injustice and acting to correct it.[6] They were observant Jews, belonging to a liberal synagogue, who showed by example the importance of treating others with decency and respect.[2] From her Jewish upbringing, Booth learned to take on responsibility for building a society that reflected these goals.[8][note 2]

After her family had moved to Long Island, Booth's mother, using Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, made her aware of the growing discontent of prosperous suburban housewives with the conventionally narrow lives they led.[2] In high school, Booth joined a sorority and the cheerleading team but left both of them when she came to believe that their members were discriminating against students who did not lead their privileged lives.[2] She began leafleting against the death penalty. In 1960, she joined CORE in a protest against the segregationist policies of the Woolworth's chain.[9] Upon graduating from high school in 1963, she spent the summer traveling in Israel and that fall enrolled as a freshman at the University of Chicago.[7] She chose that school in part because it had no sororities and deemphasized sports.[10] In college, she quickly immersed herself in political activism.[2] In 1967, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in social sciences, then in 1970, a Master of Arts degree in educational psychology, both from the University of Chicago.[6]

She and Paul Booth married in July 1967, shortly after she graduated from college.[10] They had met at a sit-in protesting the University of Chicago's cooperation with the policies of the U.S. Selective Service System whose local boards were then drafting men to serve in the Vietnam War.[11] Later that year, she was arrested during a protest at the U.S. Army induction center in Chicago.[12] The couple had two sons, Eugene Victor Booth (born in 1968) and Daniel Garrison Booth (born in 1969).[note 3]

One of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Paul Booth was national secretary of the organization when they met.[13] He helped organize the 1965 March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam,[14] subsequently became president of the Citizen Action Program in Chicago (a group formed in 1969 by members of Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation), and was later a director of the Midwest Academy.[15] Beginning in the 1980s, he held a series of positions within the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union.[16] In 2017, by then executive assistant to the union's president, he retired, continuing his political engagement by supporting Heather Booth in her work.[17] He died January 17, 2018, from complications of chronic lymphocytic leukemia.[16][note 4]

Civil rights

Booth's opposition to racial discrimination began when she was still in elementary school. She defended an African-American fellow student who was being attacked for allegedly stealing another student's lunch money. It was soon discovered that the girl who made the accusation had put the money in her shoe and forgotten it. In a 1985 interview, Booth said "I remember having the feeling that you don't do this to people."[18] While in high school, she joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to help protest Woolworth's lunch counter discrimination in the South. In 1963, soon after enrolling in college, she became head of a group, called Friends of SNCC, that was organized on campus to support the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.[11] She also became student liaison to the Chicago Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), which was then protesting school segregation in the city.[19] As CCCO liaison, she helped coordinate freedom schools in the Chicago's South Side.[6]

In 1964, Booth joined the Freedom Summer project in which volunteers from Northern and Western colleges and universities worked to register black voters and set up freedom schools and libraries in Mississippi.[13] She was arrested for the first time while she was carrying a sign saying "Freedom Now!" during a peaceful demonstration in Shaw, Mississippi.[20] In an interview conducted in 1989, she said that the experience reinforced her commitment to the civil rights movement. Confronted by the violent resistance of white Mississippians, she feared for her own life, but also realized that she could leave whenever she wished and was awed by the extraordinary heroism of the black residents with whom she worked. "They had a quiet heroism," she said, "not just by standing up to bullets, but by day to day being willing to go and talk to their neighbors, have meetings in their churches, take people into their homes." She said the work was full of tiring and frustrating tasks but recognized that it is the mundane everyday work that brings meaningful change.[6]

In 1965, Booth was arrested while demonstrating at banks that were providing financial support for the apartheid regime in South Africa.[11] Shortly afterward, she helped form a number of local groups that sought to learn about urban problems and find ways to overcome them.[10] She left SNCC in 1967 when its leaders no longer welcomed Whites as members.[21] She then devoted more of her time to issues related to feminism and the anti-war movement.[11]

Feminism

Soon after she arrived on campus, Booth ran up against the university's bias in favor of its male students. In 1965, she began to set up consciousness raising groups to deal with the problem.[2] These small groups of women met regularly to speak about incidents, both minor and more serious, that seemed to be unique but often proved to be shared. In a pamphlet published in April 1968, Booth and two co-writers noted a tendency for women to "see their problems as personal ones and thus blame themselves."[22][note 5] In discovering how many ostensibly unique concerns were actually common ones, members gained a sense of the collective influence they might exert toward changing the unfair practices and dismissive attitudes they had previously accepted as cultural norms.[23] She also helped to organize a course on women's studies, began to coach women who were uneasy about speaking up in class, and conducted a study on the disparity of treatment between male and female students in the classroom.[24] Noticing a similar unequal treatment among student activists, she founded a campus group, the Women's Radical Action Program, to document and counter the ways in which women were relegated to subordinate roles in national organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society and SNCC.[10][note 6]  In 1967, Booth joined with other activists to form the Chicago West Side Group, which was reported to have been "the first women’s liberation group in the country, with the primary goal of raising the consciousness of its members."[25]

In 1965, a fellow student asked whether Booth could help his sister who was so greatly distraught about an unwanted pregnancy as to consider killing herself.[26] By contacting the medical arm of the civil rights movement, she was able to refer the woman to a reputable doctor who was willing to perform an abortion.[2][note 7] As word quietly spread throughout the university community she was asked to make more referrals to the same doctor. In complying, she made sure that he would not only treat them, but also make sure the patients made a successful recovery.[26] The Jane Collective, or simply Jane, emerged from this early start. Booth formed it by involving like-minded students in a clandestine organization for evaluating doctors, counseling women who contacted them, performing referrals, and conducting follow-up discussions by phone.[10] By 1969 this group, calling itself the Abortion Counseling Service of Women's Liberation, began to advertise in student and underground newspapers, advising pregnant women who needed help to "Call Jane."[26][note 8] The Jane Collective disbanded following the Roe v. Wade decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on January 22, 1973, which effectively legalized abortion throughout the country.[5]: 105 

In 1969, recognizing the need to counter a strong tendency among feminists to see all organizational structures as oppressive, Booth joined with five other women to found the Chicago Women's Liberation Union (CWLU).[28][note 9] They believed that organization was essential for the movement be able to reach out to women who were not already radicalized and for it to develop strategies for winning reforms that would demonstrably improve women's lives. They said a structured approach was needed, including careful planning, the setting of specific goals, and developing strategies achieve these goals. Overall, they were committed to helping women to gain a sense of their collective power.[30] The CWLU organized local chapters, published newspapers, engaged in direct action, and ran a liberation school founded by CWLU's first staff member, Vivian Rothstein.[28][31]

After her marriage and the birth of her sons, Booth began to experience family-related issues that most feminist activists had considered to have little or no importance.[10] Finding no local child care centers in the Hyde Park community where she lived, she joined with two friends in an effort to set one up.[note 10] The bureaucratic obstruction that they encountered led the three to set up a new citywide organization in Chicago called the Action Committee for Decent Childcare (ACDC).[32] Based on the rationale given for setting up the CWLU, to which it was related, ACDC created an organizational structure having specific and achievable goals. A position paper written anonymously in 1972 stated these goals as building a power base of women who work together to accomplish specific reforms in childcare policy, with the expectation that each victory will provide an opportunity to expand the power base and bring further goals within reach. The committee did not set up childcare services but worked to overcome legal barriers to the substantial expansion of these services throughout the city. Within a few years it had forced the liberalization of licensing procedures and won a million dollar city investment in childcare centers.[10]

In 1972, "Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women's Movement", which is believed to be the first publication to use the term "socialist feminism", was published by the Hyde Park Chapter of the CWLU which included Booth, Day Creamer, Susan Davis, Deb Dobbin, Robin Kaufman, and Tobey Klass.

Community organizing

After earning her master's degree in 1970, Booth took on part-time editorial work to help support her family.[13] Outraged at her employer's treatment of its clerical staff, she encouraged them to organize. When they confronted him, the boss agreed to meet their demands but insisted on firing Booth.[note 11] She sued and in 1972 won her case before the National Labor Relations Board. The next year, using money she was awarded in the suit, she founded the Midwest Academy, a training organization that taught grassroots community organizing methods[33] based on earlier work done by Saul Alinsky.[13]

Booth and the other leaders of the academy created a highly regarded tool for the use of the community organizers who came to them for training. Using the tool, academy instructors taught the importance of establishing organizations to set specific goals for using pressure-group tactics in a formally-structured campaign.[33] This tool, the "Midwest Academy Strategy Chart," instructed students in the actions that must be taken following the articulation of a problem and the methods that must be used for determining the success of the resulting campaign. The steps include setting concrete near- and long-term objectives, identifying individuals or groups that are either committed to solving the problem or likely to become supportive allies, and they include measuring the strength and likely tactics of those who will oppose the change. The chart directs attention to targets—the specific individuals who hold decision-making power and are able to affect the campaign—and it asks how these people can be influenced. It focuses on the resources that the campaign can call upon: its budget, its staff, and facilities available to it. And it asks how the campaign can be used to strengthen the coordinating group, what experience its leaders will gain as they conduct it, and whether it offers a good chance to expand into new constituencies and raise additional money.[34]

In 1978, Booth proposed and helped to found an alliance of citizen-activist and labor organizations called the Citizen Labor Energy Coalition, often referred to as CLEC. The group chose her as its executive director at its first meeting and began work toward overcoming the mutual distaste that was seen to exist between the major elements of the New Left and the leadership of the AFL–CIO. In the words of labor historian Andrew Battista, CLEC addressed "a crucial issue of American public life: the relationship between the decline of organized labor and the decay of liberal and progressive politics." CLEC's lasting contribution is seen to be the establishment of new citizen-labor activist groups at the state level.[35]

The experience she gained as president of the Midwest Academy and the many contacts she made with people who attended its training programs enabled her to set up Citizen Action, a nationwide coalition of local activist groups.[36] Set up in 1980, Citizen Action gradually absorbed the statewide goups set up by CLEC and, eventually, CLEC itself.[35] By 1989 the new coalition had a membership of two million people with 24 state affiliates.[18] The issues it took on included plant closings, affordable health care, high energy costs, toxic waste sites, and similar problems, most of them having a degree of bipartisan support.[37] Largely influenced by the negative fallout following the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, Citizen Action began to move away from the nonpartisan activism of the other organizations that Booth had founded. Departing from her previous practice, she began to take first steps toward entering mainstream politics by helping to defeat Republican candidates for office.[38]

Progressive politics

In 1981, Booth was arrested while supporting miners during the Pittston Coal strike. A news report said she brought about 50 people to support the strike, about 20 of whom were arrested for blocking a courthouse entrance.[39] She was an adviser to Harold Washington's 1983 and 1987 mayor campaigns in Chicago[40] and subsequently served as field director for Carol Moseley-Braun's successful campaign for the Senate in 1992.[41] Because the headquarters of Citizen Action was in Washington, D.C., her position as its president caused her to make frequent trips there from her home in Chicago.[6] In Washington she was able to make a growing number of connections with the national leadership of the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party. In 1993, she became an outreach coordinator for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for women, labor, and related concerns and subsequently was named coordinator of the committee's National Health Care Campaign.[42] The DNC made her its training director in 1996. Four years later, Julian Bond asked her to lead the newly-established National Voter Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Organized as a charitible organization. the fund aimed, in its words, "to engage in issue advocacy, educate voters on candidates' stands on civil rights, and increase voter turnout in the African-American community through voter education and non-partisan registration and get-out-the-vote efforts."[43] Its work helped to produce the unusually large African-American turnout in the presidential election of 2000.[7]

Late in 1999, Booth helped found a federation of progressive community organizing groups called USAction.[44][45] USAction absorbed some of the member organizations of Citizen Action and, like Citizen Action, it was a progressive advocacy organization intended to stimulate and coordinate community pressure groups.[44] Booth also began working as a political consultant. Having previously worked with the National Organization for Women (NOW) during efforts to obtain passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, she directed field outreach for the pro-choice rallies that were connected to the 2004 March for Women's Lives that NOW helped organize.[2] In 2018, Booth was arrested at a Capitol Hill protest in support of the DACA program and in 2003, she was lead consultant to the Campaign for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and subsequently to the Voter Participation Center.[46][47] She was also the senior advisor to the One Nation Working Together rally held in October 2010[2] and consultant to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare a year later.[48] Since 2011, she has been a member of an organization of political consultants called Democracy Partners.[49]

They said, ‘Elizabeth, if you really want to push for this consumer agency, you’ve got to get organized.’ And I said, ‘Great! How?’ They said, ‘I’ve got two words for you: Heather Booth.’

— Elizabeth Warren, appearing in the documentary film, Heather Booth: Changing the World.[50]

In 2004, Booth was Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) coordinator for the New Mexico Kerry/Edwards presidential campaign.[51] In 2008, she was director of the AFL-CIO Health Care Campaign.[52] In 2009, she directed the campaign to promote congressional passage of President Obama's first budget.[46]

Booth worked to achieve financial reform and establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In 2010, she was hired to direct Americans for Financial Reform (AFR),[53] a coalition of about 200 consumer, labor, and special interest groups established in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the subsequent Great Recession.[45] AFR played a key role in achieving passage of the Dodd-Frank Act later that year.

As Elizabeth Warren later explained:

AFR managed to scrape together some money, and they used it to hire a handful of employees, including Heather Booth as executive director and Lisa Donner as her deputy. Creating a small team to organize the overall campaign for reform was a brilliant move. Instead of each nonprofit putting a little time into fighting for this or that provision, AFR coordinated the efforts of dozens of groups, magnifying the work of each one by helping them speak with a single voice. Heather and Lisa and the rest of their crew put out press releases, coordinated briefings on Capitol Hill, and organized groups of volunteers. The staffers and lobbyist and lawyers for the megabanks outnumbered them by a zillion to one, but the AFR people were there—day in and day out—hammering on the need for financial reform. They worked their hearts out.[54]

Regarding passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, Booth was jubilant but did not see the achievement as an end in itself. She wrote:

The big lesson is that if we organize, we can win. The progress we made was because people raised our voices, took the message to the public, to the streets, and to the Halls of Congress, where we were joined in our efforts by some committed elected representatives.... [T]he legislation headed to the President’s desk is a better start than almost anyone predicted was possible in the face of the powerful opposition and entrenched power of the status quo. We won. Now let's get back to work.[55]

Calling her "one of the nation's most influential organizers for progressive causes,"[8] a profile published in 2017 by journalist David Wood said:

Inside almost every liberal drive over the past five decades ― for fair pay, equal justice, abortion rights, workers' rights, voter rights, civil rights, immigration rights, child care ― you will find Booth. But you may have to look hard. Because she’s not always at the head of the protest march. More often, she's at a let's-get-organized meeting in a suburban church basement or a late-night strategy session in a crumbling neighborhood's community center. She's helping people already roused to action figure out practical ways to move their cause forward. And always she's advancing the credo she learned as a child: that you must not only treat people with dignity and respect, but you must shoulder your own responsibility to help build a society that reflects those values.[8]

In 2019, Booth was arrested during a "Fire Drill Fridays" climate change rally on Capitol Hill.[56]

During the Biden/Harris presidential campaign of 2020, Booth served as director of senior and progressive engagement and on December 15 of that year was quoted as saying "President-elect Joe Biden’s team has always focused on older voters and their concerns will be top-of-mind in his upcoming term."[57][58]

Political opponents and critics

As an activist on the national scene, Booth has drawn considerable criticism from political opponents. In 1978, Congressman Larry McDonald (R. Ga.) claimed that Booth and the Midwest Academy were associated with the Communist Party USA.[59] A year later, he quoted an article claiming that: "The founder of the Midwest Academy, Heather Tobis Booth, and her husband, Paul Booth, were top leaders of Students for a Democratic Society in the mid-1960s who decided like many other S.D.S. activists that the way to create a socialist system in the United States was to organize a 'hate the rich' campaign under cover of a 'populist' movement for those who have incomes near or below the poverty line."[60] In a book published in 2010, conservative author Stanley Kurtz called Booth "arguably the queen of socialist politics in Chicago,"[61]: 228  also saying she was determined "to drag modern American socialism, kicking and screaming, into the heart of America's mainstream institutions."[61]: 150 

In 2013, Paul Sperry said she was a leading figure among the "socialist activists and their front groups [who] played a shockingly outsized role shaping and passing the monumental financial reform legislation that authorized the creation of President Obama's powerful consumer credit watchdog agency."[62] Sperry is a conservative journalist and author of anti-Muslim books, who has served as bureau chief in Washington, D.C. for the conspiratorial website WorldNetDaily and written opinion pieces for the New York Post.[63]

Honors and awards

  • On May 9, 1987, Booth received the Thomas-Debs Award at a dinner in her honor held by the Democratic Socialists of America.[64][note 12]
  • On June 16, 2009, the Washington, D.C., office of AVODAH held a "Partner in Justice Event" honoring Booth.[65]
  • On July 6, 2013, during the national conference of the National Organization for Women, Booth accepted the Victoria J. Mastrobuono Women's Health Award on behalf of the Jane Collective.[66]
  • On September 23, 2015, the Chicago Abortion Fund honored Booth and the Jane Collective at its 25th anniversary celebration.[67]
  • On October 19, 2016, United Vision for Idaho gave a reception honoring Booth in conjunction with a showing of Heather Booth: Changing the World.[68]This was one of quite a few receptions of similar nature that were held in conjunction with the showing of the documentary film.
  • On October 21, 2020, Jane Fonda presented Booth with Personal PAC's Irving Harris Award at a virtual luncheon that was also attended by Hillary Clinton.[69] Personal PAC is an Illinois-based political action committee that is dedicated to electing pro-choice candidates to state and local office.[70]

References

  1. ^Dennis McLellan (1993-12-03). "Dr. Jerome Tobis dies at 96; UCI professor, physician and researcher". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2017-07-03.
  2. ^ Jump up to:ab c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s "Heather Booth VFA Fabulous Feminist". Veteran Feminists of America. Retrieved 2017-07-05.
  3. ^ Jump up to:ab c Heather Booth. "Some Civil Rights and Student Movement Origins to Women's LIberation" (PDF). Paper presented as part of "A Revolutionary Moment: Women's Liberation in the late 1960s and early 1970s," a conference organized by the Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Boston University, March 27–29, 2014. Retrieved 2017-07-05.
  4. ^"Hazel V Tobis, 04 Jul 2002". "United States Social Security Death Index," database, FamilySearch; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing). Retrieved 2017-06-03.
  5. ^ Jump up to:ab c d e f g h Paul D. Buchanan (2011-07-31). Radical Feminists: A Guide to an American Subculture. ABC-CLIO. pp. 104–107. ISBN 978-1-59884-356-9.
  6. ^ Jump up to:ab c d e f g h i j k l m n o Leigh Behrens (1989-07-23). "Activist voice A passion for justice fuels Heather Booth's life". Chicago Tribune. p. 3.
  7. ^ Jump up to:ab c "Heather Booth [interview]" (PDF). Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Veterans Movement. 2006-06-11. Retrieved 2017-07-11.
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  54. ^Elizabeth Warren (22 April 2014). A Fighting Chance. Henry Holt and Company. p. 147. ISBN 978-1-62779-053-6.
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  56. ^"Jane Fonda Arrested for Fifth Time When Protesting". Spain's News. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  57. ^Adrienne Coles (2020-08-20). "Seniors for Biden Celebrate Social Security". American Federation of Teachers. Retrieved 2020-12-17.
  58. ^Lillian Bautista (2020-12-15). "Biden administration needs bipartisan solutions for older Americans, lawmakers say". The Hill. Retrieved 2020-12-17.
  59. ^1978  Congressional Record,  124, Page E1184 (1978-01-16)
  60. ^1979  Congressional Record,  125, Page E3444 (1979-02-27)
  61. ^ Jump up to:ab c d Stanley Kurtz (19 October 2010). Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4391-7696-2.
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  63. ^"Factsheet: Paul Sperry". Bridge Initiative, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. Retrieved 2021-01-20.
  64. ^ Jump up to:ab "1987 Norman Thomas – Eugene V. Debs Dinner". Democratic Socialists of America. 1987-05-09. Archived from the original on 2016-06-20. Retrieved 2017-05-10.
  65. ^"AVODAH Alumni Announcements". Retrieved 2017-07-15.
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  67. ^"CAF Celebrates 25 years, Jane Celebrates 40 — CWLU HERSTORY". Retrieved 2017-07-15.
  68. ^"Meet Heather Booth". United Vision For Idaho. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
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  70. ^"Personal PAC". Idealist. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
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  72. ^"Post Cold War Strategies". Institute for Policy Studies [video]. C-SPAN (National Cable Satellite Corporation). 1990-06-05. Retrieved 2017-07-18.
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  74. ^"Freedom on My Mind Film Screening | Events | Colby College". Colby.edu. 2017-03-27. Retrieved 2017-05-14. Freedom on My Mind is a 1994 documentary.... The film tells the complex and compelling history of the Mississippi voter registration struggles of 1961–64: the interracial nature of the campaign, the tensions and conflicts, the fears and hopes.... Participants interviewed include Robert Parris Moses, Victoria Gray Adams, Endesha Ida Mae Holland, and Freedom Summer volunteers Marshall Ganz, Heather Booth, and Pam Allen.
  75. ^"WOMEN MAKE MOVIES | Jane: An Abortion Service". 1996. Retrieved 2017-07-13.
  76. ^"Women and the 1996 Elections". National Association of Social Workers. C-SPAN (National Cable Satellite Corporation). 1996-04-13. Retrieved 2017-07-18.
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  78. ^"Health Care Reform [video]". AFL-CIO. C-SPAN (National Cable Satellite Corporation). 2007-08-29. Retrieved 2017-07-18.
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  81. ^"Legendary Activist Heather Booth on The Ben Joravsky Show 6.2.17 by WCPT 820 Chicago | Free Listening on SoundCloud". 2017-02-06. Retrieved 2017-07-18.
  82. ^"This Way Forward Episode 1: What does this moment mean? by The Bowdoin Commons | Free Listening on SoundCloud". Retrieved 2017-07-18.
  83. ^"Heather Booth" (MP3). That's What She Said, Episode 2 [Podcast]. 2017-05-13. Retrieved 2017-07-18. Interview with Heather Booth, an organizer and activist in the civil rights movement, the students' movement and the women's movement. She founded Midwest Academy, a school that teaches organizers in progressive politics.
  84. ^Peter Debruge. "'Call Jane' Review: An Inspiring if Simplified History of Chicago's Underground Abortion Network". Variety Media, LLC. Retrieved 2022-01-20.
  85. ^Petula Devorak (2022-01-24). "The Janes Were Hoping No One Would Need to Call Them Again. The State of Roe V. Wade May Prove Them Wrong". Washington Post. Washington, D.C.
  86. ^Amy Goodman, Emma Pildes, Tia Lessin, Heather Booth (2022-01-24). "The Janes": The Women Who Formed a Collective to Provide Safe Abortions Before Roe v. Wade. Democracy Now! (Youtube video).
  87. ^Jennifer 8. Lee. "Before Roe v. Wade, a secret group provided abortions. Two new films tell the story". WBEZ Chicago. Retrieved 2022-02-09.
  88. ^Heather Booth (2010-03-30). "Obama Is Right to Fight for Real Financial Reform: Let's Organize to Hold Big Banks Accountable | HuffPost". Retrieved 2017-07-20.
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  91. ^Heather Booth (2010-05-03). "Bipartisanship Is Not a Substitute for Real Reform | HuffPost". Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  92. ^Heather Booth (2010-05-12). "The Two Rules of Real Financial Reform | HuffPost". Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  93. ^Heather Booth (2010-05-19). "Bankers Swarm Capitol Hill Because They Love You | HuffPost". Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  94. ^Heather Booth (2010-06-23). "It All Comes Down to This | HuffPost". Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  95. ^Heather Booth (2010-06-29). "When the public is watching, the Senate is forced to side with Main Street over Wall Street | HuffPost". Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  96. ^Heather Booth (2010-06-30). "Big Victory in the House, but Big Fight Remains | HuffPost". Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  97. ^Heather Booth (2013-12-02). "Fasting for Families: When We Act, We Can Change the World | HuffPost". Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  98. ^Heather Booth (2016-07-25). "To My Progressive Friends – About Tim Kaine | HuffPost". Retrieved 2017-07-20.
  99. ^Heather Booth (1980-09-01). "Labor's Alliances". New York Times. p. A.13.
  100. ^"Winning Any Office (or Male-Dominated Environment): An Interview | Lilith Magazine". Retrieved 2017-07-19.
  101. ^Karen Tululty (1993-12-03). "Democrats Planning Disruption of Health Forums, GOP Alleges". Los Angeles Times. p. 35.
  102. ^"Advisory Council – Women's Information Network (WIN), Advisory Council – Women's Information Network (WIN)". Retrieved 2017-07-19.
  103. ^James Bennet (1996-06-15). "Young, Eager and Training for the World of Politics". New York Times. p. 9.

 

 

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BROWNIE WISE - THE FACE OF TUPPERWARE

BROWNIE WISE - THE FACE OF TUPPERWARE
BROWNIE  WISE -  THE  FACE  OF  TUPPERWARE

Brownie Wise    (1913-1992)

Brownie Wise was a self-made woman who revolutionized marketing tactics and had a knack for motivating others. She introduced the now popular household item, Tupperware, to the market. A pioneering businesswoman when there were not many women in business, her career serves as an inspiration for generations of women.

Brownie Mae Humphrey was born in Buford, Georgia on May 25, 1913. Her father was a plumber and her mother, Rose Stroud Humphrey, was a hat maker. Her parents divorced when Wise was young, and her father left the picture. As a single parent, Rose got a job as an organizer for the hat makers’ union. The job required extensive travel, meaning Wise spent months or years at a time away from her mother. Wise grew up with her Aunt Pearl, a dressmaker near Atlanta, and an extended group of cousins. Wise was a good student but was more interested in fashion and boys than the classroom. Her cousins recalled Wise was very persuasive, a skill she would use successfully in her career.

Very few records survive from Wise’s teenage years. Relatives report she left school after eighth grade. She supposedly joined her mother to work for the union and gave speeches at union meetings. At 18, she briefly attended a YWCA camp for girls aspiring to have business careers. She dreamed of becoming a writer and illustrator.

In 1936, Wise won a contest to paint a mural at the Texas Centennial in Dallas. While there she met Robert W. Wise, who was in charge of the Ford Motor Company’s exhibit. The couple married on December 15, 1936 and quickly moved to Detroit where Robert worked as a machinist and opened a small machine shop. Their only son, Jerry, was born in May 1938. Robert turned out to be a violent drunk and the couple divorced in 1941. Wise kept Robert’s last name and never remarried. Like her own mother, she was now a single parent.

During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Wise frequently contributed to the Detroit News “Experience” column, a readers’ forum. Wise, writing as “Hibiscus,” crafted stories of her life that were a combination of wishful thinking and make believe. Beyond writing, she began working briefly in an ad agency and as a salesperson in a clothing store. During World War II, she worked as an executive assistant for Bendix Aviation. To make extra money after the war, she and her mother began selling Stanley Home Products at home parties; part of her sales pitch was a demonstration of how the products worked. Even though she became one of the top Stanley salespeople, Stanley’s founder told her that as a woman she had no place in management. She refused to accept that, and switched to selling a new product: Tupperware.

While Tupperware is everywhere now, it was not selling well in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Earl Tupper, the founder, had introduced the innovation to the market, but most people were not used to having consumer products made of plastic (which was associated with commercial and military products). Tupperware was also only in stores, where product demonstrations were impossible. Wise, who saw promise in the product, began selling it with her mother in the late 1940s. The two began a direct selling business called Patio Parties. She adopted the home party technique she used at Stanley, throwing parties and demonstrating Tupperware mainly to women. She recruited dealers and managers and was soon selling more Tupperware than any store. Her success caught the attention of Tupper and convinced him that home parties were the best sales tactic.

In 1951, Tupper recruited Wise to develop the party plan model and made her Vice President of Marketing. This job title made Wise one of the few female executives at the time. She took charge and centered the department around the home party plan. After Wise took over marketing, millions of Tupperware began flying off the shelves. Tupper took his product out of stores and began selling it exclusively through the home party plan. By 1954, there were approximately 20,000 people (including men and non-white women) in the network of dealers, distributors, and managers. All were private contractors. Many cited the opportunity to make extra money as well as Wise’s self-help rhetoric as reasons they got involved.

Now based in Miami, where the family moved in 1950 after Jerry got sick, Wise made Florida Tupperware’s salesforce center. She started a “Tupperware Jubilee”—a four-day sales meeting that mixed learning about the product with entertainment. She proposed moving the company’s headquarters to Kissimmee, FL and oversaw the design and construction of the campus. Wise also became the public face of the company, appearing on talk shows and magazine covers and serving as an honored guest or invited speaker at national sales and marketing conferences. She was usually the only woman in attendance. She was the first woman to appear on the cover of Business Week.

While Tupper was initially ok with this arrangement, he became jealous of Wise and the credit she was receiving for Tupperware’s success. The two also fought a lot. In January 1958, the Board of Directors unceremoniously fired Wise. She filed a $1.6 million law suit against Tupperware for conspiracy and breach of contract, but settled out of court for a year’s salary (about $30,000). She had no stock. Shortly after her firing, Earl Tupper sold the company. Wise saw no money from the sale.

Wise never achieved the same success. She co-founded three direct-sales cosmetic companies, served as the president of Vivane Woodard Cosmetics (1960-2), consulted for a few companies, and dabbled in real estate in the Kissimmee area. She was also active in the church and worked as an artist in clay and textiles. After years of declining health, Wise died at 79 on September 24, 1992.

While she and the company parted poorly, Tupperware now includes Wise and her contributions in the company’s official history; the company also donated $200,000 so an Orlando, FL park could be renamed Brownie Wise Park. The home party model she pioneered at Tupperware not only ensured the success of that company but it also inspired hundreds of others. Her techniques serve as the basis for the “side hustle” direct sales businesses that are now so central, particularly for women.

Works Cited

“Brownie Wise,” American Experience, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/tupperware-wise/

Brownie Wise Papers, 1938-1968, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, https://sova.si.edu/record/NMAH.AC.0509

Kat Eschner, “The Story of Brownie Wise, the Ingenious Marketer Behind the Tupperware Party,” Smithsonian Magazine, April 10, 2018, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/story-brownie-wise-ingenious-marketer-behind-tupperware-party-180968658/.

“Wise, Brownie,” Detroit Historical Society, https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/wise-brownie

How to Cite this page

MLA – Rothberg, Emma. “Brownie Wise.” National Women’s History Museum, 2022. Date accessed.

Chicago – Rothberg, Emma. “Brownie Wise.” National Women’s History Museum. 2022. id=33209984www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/brownie-wise.

Image Credit: Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?cur

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WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN RARELY MAKE HISTORY

WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN RARELY MAKE HISTORY
WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN RARELY MAKE HISTORY

There is no end to the contributions women have made over the centuries and often without the recognition and praise they deserve.  We honor them this month, the named and the unnamed.

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LESSONS FROM A TEACHER, LEADER and COURAGEOUS FIGHTER

LESSONS FROM A TEACHER, LEADER and COURAGEOUS FIGHTER
LESSONS FROM A TEACHER, LEADER and COURAGEOUS FIGHTER

Karen Lewis   (1953-2021)

The global working-class, Black liberation and labor movements lost a courageous fighter when Karen Lewis — former president of the Chicago Teachers Union  (CTU), who famously led a militant, seven-day strike in 2012 — passed away after a long battle with cancer.

Born in the South Side of Chicago on July 20, 1953, Lewis was the daughter of school teachers. She attended public schools in Chicago, such as Kenwood Academy High School, and attended Dartmouth College in 1972, where she was the sole Black woman in the Class of 1974. (Chicago Tribune, Feb. 10)

Lewis became a chemistry teacher shortly after college, and she joined the Chicago Teachers Union — an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — in 1988. In 2008, she became active in a reform caucus of the CTU known as the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE). This caucus challenged the national AFT leadership in many ways regarding crucial issues such as charter schools and so-called school “reform.”

 

From the beginning, CORE was involved with various, progressive community struggles in the city. Workers World spoke with Bob Quélos, an activist who knew Lewis personally and was involved in a 2008 campaign to stop then-Mayor Richard Daley’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics. “While most radical minded people were afraid of standing up to Mayor Daley, Karen was not,” Quélos recalls. “She stood on the frontlines against the neoliberal project.” 

In 2010, Lewis ran for CTU president on a CORE slate and won. As a strong voice against racism, budget cuts and school closings, her election victory was significant to Black educators, students, parents and community activists throughout Chicago. As one middle-school teacher, Kimberly Goldbaum, stated, “The emergence of CORE allowed many of us African Americans to go, ‘This is something we can get with.’” (Labor Notes, Feb. 10)

In 2012, Chicago teachers were facing arbitrary evaluations and the threat of merit pay, while being denied a promised 4% raise. With Lewis as its president, the CTU struck for seven days and forced the city and then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to ease up on evaluations and not unleash merit pay. 

The 2012 strike was the first teachers strike in Chicago in 25 years. And CTU mounted another labor action in 2016. Lewis was reelected as CTU president in 2013 but stepped down in 2014 due to illness and was replaced by Jesse Sharkey, another CORE activist who had served as her vice president. In 2018, teachers and education workers throughout the U.S. — starting with West Virginia, then Oklahoma, Arizona and others — walked out by the thousands against low pay, high insurance costs and privatization schemes. Education workers who participated in these walkouts also formed caucuses with a platform similar to that of CORE. Many of the education workers wore “Red for Ed” T-shirts and hats to protest.

The education workers that struck in states with Republican governors and legislators were fighting for the same reasons that CTU fought against Democratic mayors in 2012 and 2016. These defiant work actions generally took place in states that had legislatively ruled teacher and public employee strikes illegal.

It is certain that the “Red for Ed” movement would not exist today without Karen Lewis’s legacy.

The CTU held a virtual shiva — a period of mourning observed in Judaism — on Feb. 10 to grieve the death of Lewis. (Chicago Tribune, Feb. 10) CTU released a statement in her honor: “Karen did not just lead our movement. Karen was our movement. She bowed to no one and gave strength to tens of thousands of Chicago Teachers Union educators, who followed her lead and who live by her principles to this day.” (WBEZ Chicago, Feb. 8) 

By Otis Grotewohl posted on February 15, 2021          Mundo Obrero  Workers World

 

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