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JANUARY FOCUS: POLITICS AND POLICY | ISSUE 4 OF 5 | 1.24.22
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Hello and happy Monday!
Today we’re running a profile on Mary Kramer, who was the first woman to be independently elected as the president of the Iowa Senate and who served as U.S. ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean. Mary shared her story of fearlessness with us as part of our 2021 Fearless profile series. We’ll be running the other stories in the newsletter throughout the year, but if you prefer to read them together, you can see all of the profiles on our website.
Have a great week!
— Emily Kestel, Fearless editor
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Meet Mary Kramer | 2021 Fearless profile series
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BY EMILY KESTEL, FEARLESS EDITOR
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Mary Kramer served as ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean from 2003 to 2006. Photo by Emily Kestel. Illustration by Kate Meyer.
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Mary Kramer made history as the first woman to be independently elected as the president of the Iowa Senate in 1997. In 2003, she was sworn in as ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, where she served until 2006. She and her late husband, Kay, have two kids, four granddaughters and five great-grandchildren. She lives in Urbandale.
The following story has been formatted to be entirely in her own words, and has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I truly believe that being fearless is about taking risks. If you look at my career, I made some pretty big leaps.
If I were to sit on a panel where there was a contest for the most irrelevant undergraduate degree, I’d win. My first job, starting in undergraduate school, was being a piano performer in bars. Singalongs were very popular in those days and I could play by ear. I loved playing the piano. I was having a good time. I wasn’t really thinking about what else I could do.
That’s when the first Y in the road came, when I had to make a decision: Was I going to perform my whole life or was I going to teach? I looked around at my friends who were performers and thought, "I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a practice room." As much as I enjoyed performing, I had no desire to work hard enough to play in Carnegie Hall. My professor was very disappointed in me that I had decided to teach.
I met my husband, graduated a year early and went to teach school in Newton. I was a vocal music teacher and he was the band director. We were there for four years and then realized that there was really no career path for us there. We had a great life, except it was going to be the same, year after year. So we went back to Iowa City.
I taught piano and Kay got his master’s. Then he got a job teaching in Cedar Falls at UNI. I was playing the organ for a big church and I taught 36 piano students a week. Then Kay became the director of an eight-state federal project that developed media and materials for what was then referred to as educationally handicapped kids. So we moved back to Iowa City because that’s where the project was. While we were there, I got my master’s in lifelong learning and went back to teaching. I became an elementary school principal. And then I became the assistant superintendent of schools of Iowa City.
In 1976, there were no other women administrators in school districts of that size. There was one other woman superintendent, but her husband had died and she was filling in for him for the remainder of the year.
Kay’s project eventually moved to Des Moines. The kids and I stayed in Iowa City until the end of the first semester, then we moved the kids here because I needed to finish out my contract in Iowa City.
A friend of mine had a search firm and she knew that Younkers was looking for a human resources director and that they really wanted a woman. They were in the process of changing from cash registers to a genuine point-of-sale system and they were pretty sure that the very senior saleswomen weren’t going to be able to adapt. They were interested in talking to me and they later hired me. I helped open 14 stores.
By then, I was getting recruited. I knew how to manage change and how to help train employees. Blue Cross Blue Shield was introducing a new computer system that would pay claims. So I went to work there.
In 1990, three women came to my door and asked if I would run for office. The woman who was currently in the Senate seat wanted to be replaced by a woman and they thought that I had enough name recognition to make the race easier. Former Gov. Bob Ray was the CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield at the time, and they said, "We think it’s such a good idea that we’re going to go talk to him this afternoon."
I really didn’t want to serve in the public sector. But Gov. Ray wanted to develop a template of how corporate America could share executives to serve in the legislature so you could get expertise from people other than farmers and lawyers. I thought I could do it and those women convinced me.
Story continues below advertisement
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Continued from above advertisement
Running for office was the scariest thing I’d done, because it all plays out in public. Everything you do or say is right out in public and somebody will remember it. Running for Senate president was a big risk and it was a demanding position. I had difficult people to work with. Negotiating with people who have very strong opinions is very often confrontational.
I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to run again. My patience was waning. There was one year left in my term when the call came from the White House. It was on a Friday and we’d been in a special session. I had just landed in Hilton Head with Kay for a vacation. The minute I got off the plane, my phone went crazy. I thought, "It’s Friday night at 6 p.m. I’m not answering it."
We drove to the resort and the woman at the front desk said, "Sen. Kramer, you have to call your office." I thought, "Who died?" Meanwhile I was also thinking, "How does this girl know I’m a senator?" Eventually I called my assistant and she said that I had to call the White House. I said, "Becky, it is 7 p.m. Eastern on a Friday night." She said, "They’re waiting for you."
We were the go-to people for people from the White House who wanted to come to Iowa because I had run George W. Bush’s Iowa campaign in 2000. So I thought that someone had wanted to come. Wrong. It was the White House human resources office.
The woman said, "The president would like to know if you’d be willing to serve as ambassador to Barbados. He’d like for you to think about it over the weekend and call him back on Monday afternoon at 3 p.m." I looked like a guppy. My mouth was wide open. Kay said to me, "Are you OK?" And I said, "I don’t know."
Neither one of us really knew for sure where Barbados was. So we went to Barnes and Noble and got some travel books and coffee and thought, "Oh, maybe this isn’t so bad." I asked Kay what we should do, and he said, "Let’s go to dinner, I’m starving."
We really didn’t think about it or talk about it a lot that weekend. I honestly didn’t know what was expected of an ambassador or if I was qualified.
I called back at 3 p.m. on Monday and I said, "I don’t know if I’m qualified. I don’t know what’s expected. And one thing I know for sure is, I’m not a ribbon-cutter. I don’t want to go there and just attend cocktail parties."
The woman said, "Could you hold for a minute?" So I’m holding and all of a sudden I hear, "Mary, I hear you have a question." It was the president. He said, "I’m not sending you there for a walk on the beach." I eventually said, "Yes, sir, we’ll go."
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Left: Pilot Zara Rutherford. Photo by AP. Center: Professional basketball player Lusia Harris. Right: Professional hockey player Abby Roque.
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- When 19-year-old Zara Rutherford landed in Belgium last week, she made history by becoming the youngest woman ever to fly solo around the world. Rutherford said flying has taught her that life is "fragile" and there is "so much more to life than just getting a good career and making and having a good salary," and hopes her history-making journey inspires other girls and women to chase their dreams.
- Lusia Harris, who was the only woman to be officially drafted to the NBA and scored the first points in Olympic women’s basketball history, died at age 66.
- When the Olympic torch is lit next month, Abby Roque will be the first Indigenous woman to represent Team USA in women’s ice hockey. Roque and her family are members of the Wahnapitae First Nation, part of the Ojibwe First Nation based in northern Ontario.
- Longtime WHO Radio talk show host Susan Bray died earlier this month at age 79. Bray was known as the "Saucy Aussie" because of her Australian accent and her penchant for being an edgy, sometimes raunchy, talk radio host.
- Retired Iowa State University professor Silvia Cianzio is suing the school for gender discrimination, claiming she was paid less than male colleagues for years. The lawsuit, filed in Polk County District Court, alleges that all female professors within the Agronomy Department where she worked were paid less than the male professors, despite equal work requirements.
- Scientists discovered that increased heating as an effect of the climate crisis is damaging the health of fetuses, infants and babies across the world. Higher temperatures are linked to premature birth and faster weight gain in babies, which increases the risk of obesity later in life, they found.
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"FOR WHEREVER WE COME TOGETHER, WE WILL FOREVER OVERCOME."
AMANDA GORMAN
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Sharing personal stories won’t move the needle on paid family leave. Talking about money might (Time). Lindsey Vonn: The world deemed me ‘dramatic’ for my injuries. A man would’ve been called resilient (Time). The politics of going gray (WBUR). How to succeed at failure (The Atlantic). This year, the January blues seem turbo-charged. Here’s how to banish them (Vogue UK). Iowa’s child care problems show scale of Washington’s challenge (Wall Street Journal).
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My fearless moment | Angela Jiskoot
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Tell us about a time you were fearless.
In 2019, I took a leap of faith to leave the Des Moines job market as well as my marketing career to pursue a position in product management. After earning my MBA from the University of Iowa in 2018, I knew that I desired a challenge to exercise my business skills. It was a move of faith, determination and fearlessness to pursue a brand-new career focus in a new market while still living in the Des Moines metro. Long-term I learned how to lean into my strengths while pushing through the hard times to come out stronger on the other side. The leap of faith was well worth it, and I am back in the Des Moines market working in corporate communications – exactly where I am supposed to be after fearlessly leaping into a new opportunity.
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This story is part of an ongoing series where we share stories of everyday fearlessness. We always welcome and encourage you to share your own story with us. Meanwhile, check out already-published stories on our website.
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