Lynn Hardy Yeakel, MSM

Co-Chair, Vision 2020

Janine.Barber@drexelmed.edu

Director, Drexel University College of Medicine's Institute for Women's Health and Leadership®
Betty A. Cohen Chair in Women's Health

Vision 2020 Founder and Co-Chair Lynn H.Yeakel is a well-known civic and community leader and a tireless advocate for women and girls. Since 2002, she has been Director of Drexel University College of Medicine's Institute for Women's Health and Leadership™ where she holds the Betty A. Cohen Chair in Women's Health. Yeakel is the Founder and Co-Chair of Vision 2020, a national ten-year initiative of the Institute with major funding from The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company. Its goal is to accelerate the pace of women's progress towards full equality by dramatically increasing the number of women in senior leadership positions across the United States by the year 2020, when the nation celebrates the 100th anniversary of women's voting rights.

Yeakel was a founder and Board Chair of Women's Way, the first and largest women's fundraising coalition in the nation, and served as its CEO from 1980 until 1992, when she ran for the U.S. Senate. She drew national attention in what was called the "Year of the Woman," winning the primary and nearly unseating the longtime incumbent. In 1994, she was appointed by President Clinton to the position of Mid-Atlantic Regional Director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Yeakel is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate and former trustee of Randolph-Macon Woman's College and received a Master of Science in Management degree from the American College. She is active in leadership positions for local and national non-profit organizations, and she has received numerous honors and awards for leadership and humanitarian contributions, including the Pennsylvania Citizen Action Award, the Lucretia Mott Award, the MCP/Gimbel Award and the Distinguished Daughters of Pennsylvania Award. In 2010 she was the recipient of the John Gardner Lifetime Achievement Award from Common Cause, in 2011 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Red Cross, Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter, and in 2012 was honored by the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania.

Her first book, A Will and A Way (2010), presents insights into the key issues of women's independence based on her own experience and lessons from history. Learn more about Lynn Hardy Yeakel.