The History and Role of First Ladies
Three distinguished panelists – Barbara Perry, Stacy Cordery, and Anita McBride – will discuss several former First Ladies in a Global Summit program in partnership with the First Ladies Association for Research and Education and American University. The panel discussion will be moderated by Steve Scully, longtime Global Summit chairman and Senior Vice President of Communications for the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
All attendees will be required to wear masks if Erie County is in the "substantial" or "high" transmission rate of community spread on the day of an event. Attendees must also provide proof of full vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test within the last 72 hours. Please see our FULL Covid-19 policy here.
This event will be located at Gannon University in the Yehl Ballroom.
Waldron Campus Center
628 Peach St.
Erie, PA 16501
BARBARA PERRY is the Gerald L. Baliles professor and director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, where she co-directs the Presidential Oral History Program. She has written or edited 15 books on presidents, First Ladies, the Kennedy family, the Supreme Court, civil rights, and civil liberties. Perry has conducted more than 100 interviews for the George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama Presidential Oral History Projects, and she directs the Edward Kennedy Oral History Project. She served as a U.S. Supreme Court fellow and has worked for both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate. 
STACY CORDERY is the author of four books, including the New York Times best-selling biography Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker (Viking, 2007). A four-time teaching-award winner, she is a professor in the History Department at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where she teaches courses on First Ladies, the Gilded Age, and 20th century America. She is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Theodore Roosevelt Center and a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Advisory Board.
ANITA MCBRIDE Her service spans more than 30 years as a White House advisor, chief of staff, diplomacy advisor, and women’s empowerment advocate. Currently, she is Executive-in-Residence at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, DC, where she directs programming on the legacies of America’s first ladies and their historical influence on politics, policy and global diplomacy. She also serves as an advisor to the university’s president and the Office of Development and Alumni Relations and on the Advisory Board of the University’s Sine Institute of Policy and Politics. McBride served as an assistant to President George W. Bush, as well as Chief of Staff to First Lady Laura Bush. 