The Digital Women's Project Celebrate Women's Wisdom: Life Journeys

Plenary Speakers

Dr. Linda M. Thor is chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, one of the most prominent community college districts in the nation, serving more than 45,000 students each year in Silicon Valley. Before joining Foothill-De Anza, Dr. Thor served for nearly 20 years as president of Rio Salado College in Tempe, Arizona and for four years as the president of West Los Angeles College in Culver City, CA. Active at the national level, she serves on the board of the League for Innovation in the Community College, the executive council of the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET), the Commission on Lifelong Learning for the American Council on Education, the board of the Community College Baccalaureate Association and is a member of the Leadership Circle of the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has appointed her to serve on the Committee on Measures of Student Success, made up of 15 higher education leaders.

Dr. Janet Z. Giele, Professor Emerita of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandies University will reflect on changing life patterns of women during the last five decades. Dr. Giele has three interlocking interests: women's changing roles, aging and life course, and family policy. Well ahead of the resurgence of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, her 1961 doctoral dissertation (later published as Two Paths to Women's Equality) compared the temperance and suffrage branches of the 19th century women's movement. Dr. Giele is widely published in the field of women, family, and children.