Moderator: Margaret Carlson
Columnist, Bloomberg View
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
House Democratic Leader
Bio
Margaret Carlson
Margaret Carlson has been a Bloomberg political columnist since 2005. She has won two National Headliner Awards as well as the Belva Ann Lockwood alumni award from the George Washington University Law School. A former White House correspondent for Time, she was also Time’s first woman columnist and appeared on CNN’s “Capital Gang” for 15 years. A former editor at The New Republic, Carlson has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, a Poynter Fellow at Yale University, and a journalist-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame. Ms. Carlson currently serves on the boards of the German Marshall Fund and The Newseum. She earned her BA from Penn State University and her JD from the George Washington University Law School.
Representative Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi is the Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives in the 112th Congress. From 2007 to 2011, she served as the first woman Speaker of the House and was also the first woman to lead a major political party in Congress, having served as House Democratic Leader from 2003 to 2007. Leader Pelosi has represented San Francisco, California, in the House since June 1987.
During the 111th Congress, then-Speaker Pelosi worked in partnership with President Obama to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. She also led the House effort to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the historic healthcare reform legislation aimed at providing insurance for 32 million more Americans while lowering healthcare costs over the long term. Other recent legislative achievements have included passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to improve the ability of women to fight pay discrimination and repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which prohibited gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.
Nancy Pelosi, Minority Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, argues that the political system must evolve to accommodate women leaders. Pelosi asserts that the incremental gains are moving too slowly, and that women deserve a more active role in politics.