Women Rule

She was the first woman to lead a diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia. She was the U.S. ambassador to Malta. Now, Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley is trying to open up the diplomatic world to more women and people of color.

In the 2018 elections, the number of GOP women in the House dropped to its lowest number in 25 years. That’s where Rebecca Schuller comes in: Her newly formed super PAC is aimed at increasing the number of Republican women in Congress.

How do you get to be one of the most powerful women in the tech world by the time you're in your mid-30s? Maher is the head of the Wikimedia Foundation, the group that runs the fifth most popular website in the world: Wikipedia. She joins to talk about women in tech, fake news and what she discovered when she became a boss.

She went from being a paralegal and receptionist to a CEO, self-made billionaire and member of the president’s cabinet. Linda McMahon, the former CEO of WWE, former head of the Small Business Administration and current chair of America First Action — a super PAC dedicated to supporting Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign — shares what she learned along the way.

Before joining Congress, Houlahan served in the Air Force, led a major sporting-goods company, taught high-school chemistry, and was a non-profit executive. She shares what she’s learned along the way — and how she became comfortable taking on totally new challenges, time and again.

Refinery29 co-founder and executive creative director Piera Gelardi on what she’s learned as a former art-school student who became a heavy hitter in the online publishing world — including how she got comfortable asking questions in business meetings, managing a work-life balance when you work with your husband and growing up in a family business.

Katie Sturino, the founder of Megababe and blogger behind “The 12ish Style,” opens up about pushing the fashion industry to become more size-inclusive. It is, by now, folk wisdom on the Internet: Never read the comments beneath a news article. They can be filled with sexism, racism, cruel mockery and ad hominem attacks. Avoid them at all costs — especially if the article is about you, or you’re a woman, or you don’t fit a very narrow range of acceptable body types. Katie Sturino ignored that advice. She doesn’t regret it. In fact, she credits it with inspiring her “a-ha” moment. Four years ago, after being the subject of an article about personal style and “how to get dressed as a curvy woman,” Sturino took in readers’ reactions and was surprised by what she saw. “I read the comments of women, and they said, ‘Oh, my god, I’ve never seen my body on a fashion blog.’ ‘Oh, my god, I’m a size 14, and I didn’t think I could wear shorts,” Sturino said in an interview for POLITICO’s Women Rule podcast. “It was th

As editor-in-chief of the Bustle Digital Group, Kate Ward oversees some of the web's most popular news outlets, including Romper, Elite Daily, and Mic — pretty amazing for a company that started out of a Brooklyn apartment. Ward shares what she's learned in the journey from start-up to major success — including why Bustle gives its employees a financial stake in the company.

Since founding Framebridge in 2014, Susan Tynan has raised more than $67 million in funding for her company. How did she do it? By learning at every step of the way and learning to trust her own instincts. Anna sat down with Susan on stage to talk about the specific lessons she's learned from launching her own startup, how to get over the hump in starting your own business, and what it's like to be a professional woman pitching mostly wealthy, white, male investors.

The name Anna Wintour immediately calls to mind an image of a woman at once both cool and cold, her face framed by an perfect bob haircut, her eyes inscrutable, hidden behind oversized sunglasses. You imagine the mind behind those glasses — the mind behind VOGUE, the woman whose hard-charging leadership style was the basis for Meryl Streep’s titular character in “The Devil Wears Prada.” But if you’re able to escape the gravitational pull of that image, you’ll find something else: A model of how women can lead, and a cautionary tale of the double-standards they face once they do. “They’re caricatures, they’re stereotypes,” said Amy Astley in an interview for POLITICO’s Women Rule podcast. “This is a businessperson successfully running a business. It’s not easy. And some of those things that were heaped upon her, you don’t see it heaped upon men as much.” Astley is the editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest and a longtime Wintour protege who has led AD through something of a renaissance — dramatically expan

Live from SXSW in Austin, Congresswomen Terri Sewell and Veronica Escobar tell us about the unsolicited advice they've received as women running for office, what it's really like to wage a campaign for Congress, the very real barriers that women face in politics, and the best advice they've ever received about raising money.

The longtime president & CEO of PBS describes how she psyches herself up to fundraise, what businesses can do to foster talented women and how PBS has responded to the #MeToo movement. For 13 years, Paula Kerger has led PBS, making her one of the media industry's most powerful players — which is probably not something you expect to hear about someone who considers herself an introvert. In that time, she's led the organization through a lot — from the rise of online streaming services, to battles with the Trump administration over funding, to the “Me Too” movement, when sexual harassment allegations brought down one of PBS’s biggest stars: Charlie Rose. Through it all, PBS has remained a place known in the industry for the number of women in meaningful leadership roles — both on-camera and off. That’s by design. And Kerger sees that diversity as a fundamental component of PBS fulfilling its mission.

The head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administers the health care plans of 130 million Americans and oversees around 26 percent of the federal budget. It's a big job. And for Seema Verma, it's one that requires a complicated balancing act with her family back in Indiana.

The star and showrunner of Netflix’s "One Day At a Time" — one of Hollywood's few series starring and led by women of color — talk Hollywood, sexism and the stereotypes they’re tired of hearing about Latinas. It’s a TV show about a Cuban-American single mother who works as a nurse. She’s an Army veteran and her ex-husband is still a contractor overseas. She has post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety. Her teenage daughter is an out and proud lesbian in a world that isn’t always welcoming. Her son has been bullied by racists who tell him to “go back to Mexico,” even though he’s a third-generation American. Her mother, a devout Catholic and Cuban immigrant, and lives with them in a small apartment in a working-class Los Angeles neighborhood. If you’re among those who read that and think the show isn’t for you, Machado is having none of it. “We get this question a lot, like, ‘What does it have to do with me? Why should I watch it?’” Machado said in an interview for POLITICO’s Women Rule podcast. “And I’

New York City first lady Chirlane McCray joins us to talk about the work she's been doing to expand access to mental health care, her experiences growing up as the only black student in her class from sixth grade through high school, the strangeness of being an introvert in a prominent public position in one of the most media-saturated cities in the world, and whether her husband (NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio) will run for president in 2020 — and why she's thinking about running for office herself.

Years before Heather Wilson was secretary of the Air Force or a member of Congress, she was a student in just the third class in Air Force Academy history that admitted women. She talks with us about how the national security world has changed for women over her career, the many different hats she's worn, and what it's like to be mentioned as potentially the first woman to become secretary of Defense.

Nan Whaley has always known she was a democrat. Her father was a union worker and her mother was a local official in their small Indiana town. She got into politics after going to Dayton for college, and she became the youngest woman elected to the Dayton City Commission, at age 29. She offers her perspective on how to get comfortable with asking for political donations -- "You’re asking people to invest in you and invest in the vision that you’re trying to move forward" -- and what she learned from her failed campaign to be Ohio's governor.

Earlier in her career, Jean Case was on the executive track at General Electric when she made a big leap -- into tech. She rose to be a senior executive at AOL in the 1990s. Later, she and her husband Steve founded the Case Foundation, which she now runs. She speaks with Anna about taking risks, learning from failure, and how the culture at tech startups was different some 25 years ago.

Stacey Abrams says the surge of new voters in Georgia's 2018 gubernatorial election -- though it wasn't enough to propel her to victory -- means the state is a must-visit for Democrats running for president in 2020. Abrams tells Anna Palmer about the discrimination she faced in the Georgia State House, what she learned in her run for governor, and how her first campaign job morphed from being a secretary to being the candidate's speechwriter.

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) is the first woman to chair the powerful House Appropriations committee since it was created in 1865. And she’s ready for the government to open back up. Plus, a conversation with Patrina Clark, president and founder of the government consulting firm Pivotal Practices and a longtime federal worker, on the real-life impacts the shutdown is having on her and her business.