Valerie McGinty | Founder @ Fund Her

Good evening, everyone. My name is Valerie McGinty, and I'm the founder and president of FundHer. How many of you out there know already that the California State Legislature is comprised of just 22% women? A fair number of hands, I really can't see, but— And how many of you know that— Thank you. Wow, so responsive. How many of you know that that number's been going in the wrong direction, that we're down from where we were a decade ago, we were 30%? Okay. Fewer hands. Well, I didn't used to know any of these things. Certainly growing up, I was never political, and I wasn't really much of a feminist. But one thing I was was I was a doer. My parents taught me early on the importance of hard work and instilled in me the sense that I was capable, that I could do things. "You could do that. You could do that." And not just that I could do things, but that my life was up to me. So that if I wanted— if I saw things I wanted to have happen, it was up to me to make those things happen. So when I was 8 years old, I started my own dog walking business. When I was 12, I started working at the grocery store. And when I was 16, I was working at the bank. And I loved the sense of independence I got from work. Both emotionally and financially, I had the feeling that I could handle any situation that came my way. I could work with different kinds of people, And I've been socking away the money since I was 8 years old, so by the time I was 16, I could buy my first car with my very own money, and that was a fantastic feeling. I also came from a family with a very strong tradition of female leadership. So in my family, women lead alongside men, and that's just normal. But when I emerged from my family cocoon, and entered the real world, I saw that, in fact, that was not normal at all, or at least it wasn't how the rest of the world operated. And we know that women, although we're 50% of the population, we are 70% of the world's poor. We know that women make 70 cents to a man's dollar, and if you're a woman of color, it's as low as 54 cents. We also know that women are vastly underrepresented in positions of leadership. So I mentioned we're 22% of the California State Legislature. When you look at the nation's governors, we're 10%. And we're 4.6% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Now, these numbers are unfortunate not just for women, but for all of us. Because when women are seated at those decision-making tables, we make a real contribution. We know that companies where women are at least 40% of the board of directors outperform companies where there are fewer women. We know that women members of Congress bring home on average 9% more than their male counterparts. And we also know that women change the the legislative conversation, so they bring up issues that would otherwise be underserved or completely ignored. They tend to legislate more than their male counterparts on issues of healthcare, education, and poverty—issues that are critical to our nation's success. And so, for a while, I had be—been a budding feminist, but I still wasn't necessarily political until 2015, when I saw one of the early campaign speeches of Hillary Clinton. And I hadn't really heard from her, at least on the political stage, since 2008, when she lost in the primaries to Barack Obama. And in that speech, she told us the story. She took us from the day that she lost the 2008 primaries all the way to the day when she accepted the nomination to be Secretary of State. And she told that story with such openness and wisdom and such a sense of humor. I was captivated. And as I sat there, I let myself think about how that would feel to have the first woman president. President of the United States? For me as a woman, for me as a citizen, and as a mother of two young daughters, what would that feel like? I decided it would feel pretty great. And so I was all in for Hillary. And the last time we saw her, my husband and I took our two daughters to one of her final campaign appearances at the Billy Graham Auditorium. In October, and when we left that event, the sense that we were on the edge of something big was palpable. And then Trump won. And I knew I had to do something. It wasn't just that a misogynist with no political experience had won the nation's highest public office. Wasn't that, wasn't just that. But it was also that he had beaten a woman who was possibly the most qualified person to ever run for that office, and he had done it with the help of the votes of 62% of white women. And I thought to myself, "Have we accepted our status as second-class citizens?" Well, I haven't, because we're not. And so I knew I had to do something. But what could I do? And so, as I slowly emerged from my fetal position in the days and weeks following the election, one day I remember very clearly sitting at my kitchen table with my dad, who was forever my booster, forever my collaborator, and we were talking about what could possibly be done. And as we brainstormed, the options seemed to dwindle to almost nothing, and I looked at him and I said, "I can't." I can't just turn away from this. I can't just hand this world off to my two daughters and say, "Welp, did my best." Because I haven't. Not yet. And he looked at me with that perfect dad look and he kind of went, "Ooh, hmm, how are we going to do this one?" And then his eyes lit up and he said, Well, how about all the success you've had with California fundraising? What if you could do something with that? Maybe you could get not just one woman, but 20 women elected. And just like that, it clicked. And I knew that's what I wanted to do. So now I had an idea, but would I really do something? I mean, after all, it has to already exist. This is California. It's a big state, someone must have thought of this. So I went around looking for the wonderful organization that already existed that I could just write a check to, it's going to be very easy. And as I went up and down the state talking about this idea, I talked to women who had run and won, I talked to women who had run and lost. I talked to women who had been in California politics for decades. And I said, "Do we really need this?" I mean, doesn't it already exist? Uniformly, they all said, "Oh no, it doesn't exist, and we definitely need it. If you can do it, you should definitely do it." And I thought to myself, "Oh no, now I'm going to have to actually do something." So troublesome, isn't it? It's so great to just have a whiz-bang idea, and then you have to actually act on it. It's really— the action part is— Troublesome. Homework, more homework. So I thought to myself, and then there's that voice inside of me that said, "Who do you think you are? Who are you?" I had the vague feeling I was going to be arrested, you know, like, "Oh, you're starting your own PAC for women." And— but then there was the answer to that voice that said, "Who am I?" not to do it. And if I don't do it, who's gonna do it? So I knew it had to be done, so I thought, I'd rather know what it feels like to try and fail than to wonder years later, could I have done something? I don't know. I kind of, I decided to go on vacation, read a book. So I thought, I'm gonna give it a go. And there we were, on the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump's election, and we were celebrating the launch of FundHer. Woo! Woo! And I'm thrilled to report that in the short time since our launch, we've been able to help elect already our first progressive woman candidate to the California State Legislature. Yeah! Woo! And there's lots more to come. But for us, it's the idea that we want to help California be the first state to reach gender parity. California is first in so many things. Why shouldn't we be first to reach gender parity? Woo! I'll drink to that. And so there we were driving home from the launch, and my 10-year-old said to me, "Mom, I'm so proud of you. You took an idea," and turned it into a reality. And so can you. And I want to leave you with one of my favorite poems that I've adapted. It's called "It Could Not Be Done," and it's by Edgar Albert Guest. Somebody said it couldn't be done, but she with a chuckle replied that maybe it couldn't, but she would be one who wouldn't say so. 'til she'd tried. So she buckled right in with the trace of a grin on her face. If she worried, she hid it. And she started to sing as she tackled the thing that couldn't be done. And she did it. Thank you.