Senator Olympia Snowe

Former Senator Olympia Snowe gave the Keynote Address at the womenwinning Annual Luncheon on June 3rd. There were about 1200 people at the event, including Governor Mark Dayton and Speaker Paul Thisssen. U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced the former senator as being her mentor when she first went to the United States Senate.

Senator Snowe is a very charming woman who articulated the need for people to work together in order to accomplish the work that needs to be done. She talked about some

of the ways women in Congress banded together to make changes, like finding out that research regarding heart problems only tracked men until the women legislators said that women in this country also have heart problems and the surveys should relate to them as well. She has written a book, Fighting For Common Ground, to help promote the concept of “compromise”, a necessity if our country is going overcome the current polarization that plagues our legislative process.

Senator Snowe had lost both her parents by the age of nine. She was a young wife when her husband was killed in an auto accident. He was serving in the state legislature at the time. She was asked to run for his seat, she did, and the rest is history. In spite of these hardships, she obviously had incredible resiliency because she has had a remarkable career to date and it looks like she has a lot planned for the future.