Susan R Bailey is a retired lawyer who splits her time between Atlanta and Sapelo Island. She was one of the first women students at the UGA Law School and also studied at Stanford and Duke. Sue was very active in the League of Women Voters and started the Athens chapter of National Organization for Women (NOW).
Reita was Jeannette Rankin’s personal assistant at the time of Jeannette’s death. She knew about the bequest Jeannette had left to help “mature, unemployed women workers.” Her relationship with Jeannette Rankin was the impetus for the gathering of five founders of the Foundation. Reita continued her career at UGA serving as Assistant to the Director of the Sea Grant Program overseeing the grants management and many other administrative functions. Reita passed away in January of 2020.
Margaret is a retired faculty member from the Department of Adult Education at the University of Georgia, and since 1981 has worked on multiple projects with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation in Dayton, Ohio. Margaret has served on multiple boards and contributed to many civic initiatives.
Heather Kleiner is one of the founding members of the revitalized Women’s Studies Program –now the Institute of Women’s Studies– at UGA. In 1989 she was appointed the acting coordinator of the program. Heather became the assistant director and later the associate director, retiring in 2000.
Gail is an Athens native who served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South India. She has been a writer and an activist for Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and against War since her teen years. Gail was the first woman elected chair of the Clarke County Democratic Committee. She earned degrees at the University of Georgia studying Twentieth Century Revolution and Decolonization. Gail wrote the stanza of the UGA Alma Mater
that, finally, added women to the song.