Nancy M. Zirkin
Wired for the 21st century and seemingly naturally caffeinated, Nancy M. Zirkin is rarely caught without her blackberry, cell phone, or laptop. Ms. Zirkin's high energy and interest in politics can be traced back to her roots, growing up a fourth generation Marylander in Baltimore in a family accustomed to having mayors and congressmen at the dinner table. She notes that she was, "very interested in politics as a child the way other kids were into movie stars."
As a child, Ms. Zirkin can remember watching the political conventions with her father and learning which politicians controlled the levers of power. While attending the Park School in Maryland, she became absorbed by the school's streak of progressive activism. Ms. Zirkin, along with her high school teachers, frequently protested against the efforts to displace poor African Americans in Baltimore to make way for new development, a practice commonly referred to as "Negro removal."
Her commitment to activism followed her to college where, though she attended a number of schools along the way, she ultimately graduated from Old Dominion and was extremely active in protesting the Vietnam War. In 1969, Ms. Zirkin, then a young mother, came to Washington, D.C., to pursue a career in public service. She soon joined Senator Edmund Muskie's campaign working on women's rights issues.
During the mid-1970s, Zirkin worked at several public interest organizations, including Common Cause and the Women's Equity Action League, but she really cut her teeth at American Association of University Women (AAUW) where she became director of public policy and government relations. She distinguished herself there by rising to chief lobbyist and managing the coordination of the Equal Rights Amendment, Women's Vote Project, and Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988.
While Ms. Zirkin officially joined The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund in 2002, she has been a part of its various lobby efforts, including task forces on education reform, hate crimes, affirmative action, and judicial nominations, since the 1990s. As the current executive vice president for policy for The Leadership Conference, she leads the coalition's lobbying efforts.
Under Ms. Zirkin's leadership, The Leadership Conference/The Education Fund has gone from a 10-person operation to nearly four times as many people, creating the infrastructure necessary to support the organization's growing institutional needs. Well-known for her pragmatic outlook, she tends to be very cautious when managing expectations of others, which is a critical perspective when dealing with a coalition consisting of 180 national organizations. "Often we need to step back and see what's doable," she says.
