Robin Gerber—national commentator, scholar, and author of Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way: Timeless Strategies from the First Lady of Courage—will give the keynote address at Scripps College’s fall academic convocation exercises on Thursday, September 11, at 11:00 a.m. in Garrison Theater in the new Performing Arts Center on the Scripps campus. Gerber will discuss the timely topic of “Women and Leadership.” This event is free and open to the public, and no reservations are required.
A member of the Board of Contributors for the opinion pages of USA Today, Gerber has been published in numerous newspapers including The Washington Post, Newsday and The Christian Science Monitor. Gerber has been a guest on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, a commentator for NPR’s Marketplace and a guest on dozens of radio talk shows. She is currently a senior scholar at the Academy of Leadership and executive education senior fellow at the University of Maryland’s R.H. Smith School of Business.
A frequent guest lecturer at conferences and events, Gerber also leads workshops and seminars regarding women’s leadership development on topics such as “Finding Your Leadership Passion,” “Networking,” “Communicating as a Leader,” “The Politics of the Workplace,” and “Embracing Risk.” Her clients have included Bank of America, IBM, Southern Company, Lee Hecht Harrison, Freddie Mac, the Association of Junior Leagues International, the National Council of Girls’ Schools and numerous colleges, universities and nonprofits including Scripps College, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Council for Excellence in Government.
Gerber has worked with women to develop their leadership potential since 1975 when she began working with the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations in New York. She continued her work with labor unions in New York, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. and served as top lobbyist and political director for a major international union, one of very few women to do so. At the Academy of Leadership, a think tank on leadership, Gerber teaches courses on women’s leadership, politics, and history.
Gerber obtained her law degree at Antioch Law School in Washington, D.C in 1982.