Transcription of Christina McAnuff, executive director at Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute for the show Love Maine Radio #311: Kristen Farnham and Christina McAnuff
Dr. Lisa Belisle: My next guest is Christina McAnuff, the Executive Director of the Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute, a nonprofit organization providing a three-year program that builds the confidence, aspirations, and leadership skills of girls across Maine. Thanks for coming in today.
Christina McAnuff: Thanks for having me, Lisa.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: So tell me about this organization. It’s a relatively new entity, is it not?
Christina McAnuff: It is. So the Institute was founded in 2014, and we welcomed our first class of sophomores in the fall of 2015, so they are now our first class of rising seniors this fall. And then in 2016, we welcomed our second class of sophomores and we expanded from seven schools in Androscoggin County to an additional one school in every other county. So now we had 21 schools, and this year we expanded once again and we will welcome students from 36 schools in all 16 Maine Counties in September.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: What does the program look like? What do the sophomores do?
Christina McAnuff: So the program follows a three-year progression. The sophomore track is called My Values, and during that year, students identify their values; they learn what a value is. They also explore their strengths and their passions, so it’s really about self-knowledge. The junior year is called My Voice, and believe it or not, it starts with how do you listen to other people? And then it reconnects with their values and what the young women want to say and how to get heard appropriately. And finally in the senior year, the track is My Vision; so now that I know what’s important to me, what I’m really good at and what I’m excited about, I know how to engage with other people and get things done. Where do I go from here? What does my future look like? And that’s when we talk about resilience, reframing failure, empathy, and gratitude.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: How did you become involved with this organization?
Christina McAnuff: You know we all have these twisty paths ,and mine is no different. I was working as the director of the High School Abroad Program at CIEE which is the Council on International Educational Exchange. And so I was super happy helping facilitate meaningful exchanges for high school students in the US abroad. And a friend and mentor sent me the job description for the executive director and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it; I couldn’t get it out of my head. So one weekend, I sent the family out of the house and after five years overhauled my resume and wrote a cover letter and I threw my hat in the ring. That was the beginning of the transition from a job I loved to a job that I love and really fits well with my values and my strengths and passions.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: You’re originally from, well you and I share a hometown I should say.
Christina McAnuff: We do.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: And you and I went to school together in the Yarmouth Systems up until, I believe, you went in seventh grade to North Yarmouth Academy.
Christina McAnuff: Yes, I did.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: What was it about your own upbringing that caused you to be interested in this type of work?
Christina McAnuff: So I think looking back on my teenage years, I was really fortunate to be in a caring and supportive environment. And supported by lots of women, even outside of my home; women and men actually, and so I knew that was part of how I learned about myself. I saw my traits in others and I looked at how they saw the world and I wanted to give back to young women the way so many people in my community had given to me. Also, through my travels over the years and I’ve been fortunate to visit more than 30 countries, I have seen that not everyone grows up with privilege.
I do feel now that I come from privilege, and with that comes responsibility. And so to be able to give back and to connect young women with caring and trained mentors, to make a difference in their lives and to help them really on the path to being their best selves, that that fills my cup. That is really meaningful work and so that’s I think my upbringing has informed how I want to show up for the next generation.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: What are your observations about the women of Maine, having worked now with, I guess you said your first graduating class is going to be this year. So, you’ve had a couple of years of experience under your belt?
Christina McAnuff: So I have been with the institute a little more than a year. I joined in May of 2016, so I do feel like I know several of the seniors well. And I’ve also been so fortunate as we’ve expanded the program to travel across Maine; I’ve been up to Madawaska and all points in between and I have noticed an incredible resilience. There are a lot of economic challenges across our state, there certainly is poverty, there is food insecurity, and yet with that is incredible resilience, credible pride in our communities, and young women with incredible gifts that are making their way every day. And I believe that so many of them are going to succeed and that another layer of them will now succeed because of an additional level of support from our communities.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: What are some of the concerns that people are sharing with you about the experience of being a young woman in this day and age in Maine?
Christina McAnuff: Well, when I was learning about the institute and reading the research the board shared with me, I, just like they were was very concerned by what we were reading about how young women are losing confidence at such incredible rates compared to male peers and that’s not to suggest that boys don’t need support as well. And yet they were no longer raising their hand when they transition to high school. And so that’s the first concern, is that there is a really big challenge being a young woman. I’m learning now too about gender bias that is everywhere, and even people who are cognizant of it still fall prey to gender bias.
And I also think the media plays into it, young women have a certain idea of what they should be or they think they should be based on what they see. And so that’s impacting how they show up in school. Social media of course I think it plays a huge role in how we communicate and it’s not always positive. And so teaching young women how to engage with other people appropriately feels like a really good place to start on getting them on track to showing up for themselves so they can be their best self, but also being a support for peers.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: This organization is named for Olympia Snowe who spent a lot of years as a woman in really male-dominated field. When you’ve had conversations with her, what has she told you about her background, her history and why she thought that this was so important to bring back to her home state?
Christina McAnuff: Well one story that stands out is how when she arrived in the US Senate, there actually weren’t bathrooms for women. That they had to leave the Senate floor unlike their male counterparts and that’s that stuck with me and yet she shared so many other stories about how it was difficult to get heard as a woman. And even today we read articles about how some women politicians are interrupted. She certainly faced that. She’s also shared too growing up and even in her career, having moments where she had a crisis of confidence.
And I think that’s why she prepares so well for everything she does and why she makes so much time when she was in the Senate for constituents and now even as really the figurehead of the Institute, makes so much time for friends and supporters of the institute, not to mention the young women. And so when I see her connect with other people, it is so genuine and authentic and that’s because that’s how she showed up when she was in the Senate and she sees the value in everyone, showing up listening to others and building consensus. And so, those parts of her experience and how and what led to several of her successes are built into the program for our young women.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Your experience growing up, I mean, you and I are roughly contemporary. Being a female in the 80s was for me, it was kind of this time where we were told we could do anything; there was a whole free-to-be-you-and-me error, and boys and girls and we all were going to grow up to be doctors and teachers and….
Christina McAnuff: And you did.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: And actually, yeah, I guess that worked so good job for you and me. But there have been some, I’m imagining in your life, there probably has been… There have been some moments where all of a sudden what we were told didn’t necessarily bear out. Can you think of any that you might be willing to share?
Christina McAnuff: I think it’s a great question and one that requires thought. I mean I was raised by two teachers who like your parents I imagine, did told me that I could be anything. Although that said, I think the first time I, when I was preparing to graduate from college, I went to a college in Pennsylvania; I really wanted to join the Peace Corps. And I think that was the first time that decision to apply or not apply was… I was faced with my first conflict and that was that I was graduating with a great deal of student debt and that the Peace Corps wouldn’t necessarily position me to start paying off that debt.
And so that was the first time that I thought, I can’t be what I want; I want to give back while I’m young and while I have this energy and this desire to engage with the world. So I made the decision to take a job instead. So it wasn’t necessarily a message I received from anybody, it was the reality of the financial aid that I had been so fortunate to receive and needing to turn around and feel a responsibility to start to pay that off.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: So that wasn’t specific to being a woman, it was just specific to living in a time of student debt? Was there ever a conflict that you encountered as a female? I mean, I’ll give you an example in my own life. I was a doctor in training and I my first child, I was pregnant with him my first year of medical school. And there wasn’t really… I mean it was very biologic; I have a child inside my uterus who is gestating. But there was not really a way to kind of reconcile the two worlds; I needed to keep moving forward with an educational process and he needed to keep moving forward with his living process and there wasn’t really a, there was no in between. I mean there wasn’t a way to pull back and not be able to do both at the same time. Does this make sense?
Christina McAnuff: It does, and although what you shared reminds me of a time, my experience is a little bit different when I was newly married. My husband and I wanted to continue building our family and I remember an employer saying after I got married, “Now that you’re married, do you want to work part time? Because you have new children…” My husband has two children from a previous marriage and I remember thinking, “Would you ask this of me if I were a man?” And it’s funny I think I’ve repressed that memory until you started talking about it. I remember thinking this is not, it’s not only not appropriate, but it’s potentially not legal. And that was the first time that I thought, “Gosh, how I’m viewed is represented in part by my gender.”
So it was within the next year that I did transition from that organization. And I would say as a mother, I’ve been very fortunate to have a supportive partner, because my next role which was at CIEE required a great deal of international travel. And so to have someone that said, “Go for it, take that job and I’ve got you covered on the home front,” it was empowering; it was empowering as a woman and as a mother and so for that I’m very, very grateful. And other than that, I really don’t have too many times thankfully where my gender has influenced my path.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Your daughter just turned seven which is a fun age, she’s a beautiful child.
Christina McAnuff: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: I met her the other day. What do you think that her life is going to look like given that she’s female?
Christina McAnuff: Gosh, I hope and I see it already; I hope first and foremost that she loves herself. While we grow up, we know we just talked about how we grew up in this age of empowerment and we both received those positive messages from our parents, and of course I deliver those as well as my husband. I do worry about the messages she receives when she’s not with us, either through social media, through magazines, pop culture, and so we try and first limit that. But I do worry about what’s outside of my control. So I can still control a great deal because of her age and yet by the time she gets to middle school, high school, I wonder what the world will look like. And yet with programs like the institutes with other programs around the state and also a movement to support women in general around the world.
I have a great deal of hope that the challenges I faced whether it was personal, struggling with my perception of myself and my abilities or how I thought the world perceived me, I hope that it would be a different world for her. So it’s hard for me to envision and yet every day I’m going to try and build her up so that she has every confidence that she can be her best self whatever that is.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Are you encouraged by this groundswell of support for women?
Christina McAnuff: It is every day I am thankful not only for the individuals and corporations and foundations that support the Institute, but also the number of women that have come forward to say, “I want to get involved”. They raise their hands, they go through an extensive training, they give their personal time, they take time outside of their careers to deliver the program and engage with our young women. And it’s gratifying and also it’s so incredible to see the connections that are being made; because the young women benefit, but also our volunteers, our advisors benefit and that’s what feels so good is that so many come back and say, “This is the most rewarding work I’ve done and I’ve been volunteering for 25 years”.
And I know that their experiences are just the tip of iceberg. Each year we will welcome more than 70 advisors for incoming classes of sophomores. And I know the experiences will continue to be transformative for the girls, for the advisors, and that that will have a ripple effect across the state.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: What does the application process look like if you are a young woman in high school who is seeking to become part of this program?
Christina McAnuff: That’s a great question. There actually is no application process, because we know that young women are losing confidence at great rates and by the time they arrive in high school, in their freshman year, that they’ve stopped raising their hand, we actually work with guidance counselors and freshman teaching teams to identify young women who while on solid academic and social footing could benefit from an additional layer of support outside of school. And so these young women have talents and passions and yet with the support to really connect with those strengths and passions and to find their way, find their voice working with a mentor, it could make the difference. And so, we schools, nominate the young women; they’re invited to join and then they can make the decision if it’s the right program for them after learning more about what it looks like.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: Over the course of the three years of high school, how often do the women get together with each other and with their mentors?
Christina McAnuff: So the program is once a month, during the school year; so from September through May. There are meetings and twice a year, all the girls from across the state come together once in November. It’s an event we call the fall four minutes with Senator Snowe. We generally host it in a central location, this year we’re in Bangor and over the course of an entire day, the young women engage not only with their mentors and with young women from across the state, but also have opportunities to network. And that’s a big outcome that we’re shooting for.
It’s at the end of three years; each girl has a network of support she can turn to when she’s in college, after college. And so that’s a really important day in November and then at the end of the year, we bring groups together regionally, not only to network, but also to celebrate the year of discovery and it’s another chance for them to interact with Senator Snowe and caring women and men from across the state. So there are eight meetings, so eight or nine meetings with their advisors and their cohort and then these two additional meetings, either regional or state wide.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: It’s early yet because you have your first class going into their senior year, but is there a particular story you could share that you consider evidence of a success, an early success of this program?
Christina McAnuff: There are several. I think of one young woman and I get choked up. Her name is Julia and she had always wanted to be a swimmer. And she lacked the confidence to join the swim team. And last November after having joined this group and met her advisors, she decided to try out for the swim team as a sophomore. She made the swim team and she swam all last year and she shared with me this spring that she’s the captain for her senior year. And you know, I know a little bit more about Julia’s story and it’s just it’s incredible. It’s incredible what she’s achieved and how she’s so willing to share her story with others.
And then I think of another young woman who later this week will job shadow at CIEE who raised her hand and through the women she’s met, has started to explore a career in facilitating programs for high school students. And to be able to voice that, something she had never thought of before and to be able to connect with women at CIEE who are doing great and exciting work and for her to say, “Will you welcome me for a day?” And then I turn to the outcomes at the end of our first year we’re still waiting on outcomes for this past year, but the increases in the young women who would raise their hand and ask for help from someone they’ve not met before.
The number of young women, the increase in the number of young women who believe they can make a difference in their community and, you know, the more than 20% jump in the number of girls who now believe that they are confident person and that they are leaders. And so I can’t wait to see what those outcomes look like after year two and then after year three; because that’s what’s so nice is we get to see them over the course of their high school career, that’s very meaningful.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: It’s been a pleasure to have you in today. It’s always good to see you.
Christina McAnuff: Likewise.
Dr. Lisa Belisle: I guess we should thank our teachers in the Yarmouth school system because they have obviously provided a lot of wonderful background for both of us. I’ve been speaking with Christina McAnuff, who is the executive director of the Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute, a nonprofit organization providing a three-year program that builds the confidence, aspirations, and leadership skills of girls across Maine. Thank you so much for coming in on the work you’re doing.
Christina McAnuff: Thank you for having me Lisa.