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The U.S. State Department and five prominent liberal arts colleges for women plan an endeavor to train and support female leaders in public service around the world.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in New York the creation of the Women in Public Service Initiative. Speaking at the Women in the World: Stories and Solutions conference, Clinton furthered her career-long promotion of women as vital partners in government, diplomacy, and society at large.

"I'm often asked, why on earth do I believe that women and girls are a national security issue? Well, I believe it because I know that where girls and women are oppressed, where their rights are ignored or violated, we are likely to see states that are not only unstable, but hostile to our own interests," she said. "So we must do even more to help the next generation of women leaders."

In partnership with Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges and her alma mater, Wellesley College, Clinton said the state department "will seek to promote the next generation of women leaders who will invest in their countries and communities, provide leadership for their governments and societies, and help change the way global solutions are developed."

Kate Salop, assistant vice president and executive assistant to the president of Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, said exploratory conversations between the schools and the State Department had gone on for several years. Finally, the time was right.

"The idea was, what better time, when there's so clearly a need for women's leadership in the world, to bring together the colleges that have been doing this historically with a woman who is at the top of her field?"

To protect and to serve

In addition to Clinton and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, another Wellesley alumna, the women's colleges have consistently educated graduates who go on to serve in leadership capacities, including in government and public service. Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts graduated Kavita Ramdas, a recent past president of the Global Fund for Women. Clinton's current Special Representative for Muslim Communities, Farah Pandith, is an alumna of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

"These schools represent achievement for women and they want to spread this value around the world," Pandith says. She adds that when you consider the aggregate history of these five colleges you get "nearly a thousand years of experience" in educating women for leadership.

In addition to their commitments to American women, the colleges have long educated top students from around the world. Currently, for example, Mount Holyoke, enrolls 26 percent international students.

Clinton emphasized the need to train women to be leaders in their own countries as a means toward helping certain communities lift themselves out of poverty.

"Society as a whole suffers when a huge proportion of its productivity potential is stifled," she said, referring to countries in which women have limited or no access to economic independence. When they work and earn money, she went on, women tend to invest more in their families and communities. They "spread wealth, they create a positive impact on future development."

That has implications far beyond meeting immediate needs. When women aren't fulfilling their potential, she said, "it is far less likely that peace and security are present."

"At a time when governments, NGOs, and businesses are increasingly recognizing how educating women and girls allays poverty and political instability, we need women leaders, committed to the public sector, from many nationalities and socioeconomic backgrounds, globally educated and prepared to lead," said Smith College President Carol T. Christ in a statement. "That is the venture on which we embark."

Acting globally

The Women in Public Service Initiative will begin with an organizing conference on the Bryn Mawr College campus in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania this fall, where many more details will be worked out. For now, organizers expect the initiative will sponsor an annual summer leadership institute for emerging leaders from the United States and around the world. The event will rotate among the five campuses--Barnard College is in New York City--and will be an in-person meeting that, Salop says, will foster networking in addition to providing concrete leadership training. She says the colleges will tap both their alumnae networks and their faculty to bring in practicing public servants, innovative thinkers and professors "who can offer a unique opportunity for these young women."

Most participants likely will not be graduates of the colleges, though some may be. The target audience is women in their 20s and 30s who are either beginning careers in public service or are poised to make the transition into that arena, Salop says. The women's colleges, she adds, have long called upon their alumnae to make positive contributions in the wider world. This is a way for the schools themselves to live up to that expectation.

"We're coming together to signal a peer investment in the public good," she said. The Women in Public Service Initiative will further the schools' missions through a platform that is ancillary to their ongoing regular curricular commitments. The initiative will reach out far and wide for participants.

"A lot of these women will not be known to many of us but they are the ones who are making change on the ground right now," Clinton says of the people she hopes the initiative will attract and support. "They are the ones who need our help and we will stand with them."

"This is not just an American initiative, this is a global initiative," Pandith says. The state department has other collaborations with universities and colleges but this particular one is different, she adds.

"This issue of [women in] public service is something that is unique, it is something that we've seen a need for," she says. "We're trying to fill the black hole of awareness."

She says one major effort of the initiative is to generate more recognition of the need for women to take on leadership roles in government, politics and diplomacy.

"This initiative is a challenge to the global community to commit to women in public service," she says, and the women's colleges are the right institutions with which to partner on such a mission because in addition to fostering women's achievement they have advocated for giving back to one's community.

"We want to see more women around the world engage in a life that gives back to others in the public service arena, drawing on the networks and the ethos of these schools," Pandith says. "We know we will affect change."

Pandith adds that while Secretary Clinton has launched the initiative and believes completely in its importance, it is not a political act that will dissipate once Clinton is no longer in office.

"This is a collaboration and a partnership that is going to be growing because we have longevity here [at the State Department]," Pandith says. Incorporated into several different bureaus within the department, she says, "the partnership will be there." Much of the year-to-year operations of the program will fall to the colleges, she says, because they are the educators and have the history and experience to create an ongoing program.

For the colleges, the partnership helps raise awareness of their broad missions.

"It sends a clear signal of our ongoing commitment to women, even those beyond our campuses," Salop says.

With the recent political turmoil in parts of the world, Secretary Clinton described these times as a historic moment that could be the beginning of another great triumph of freedom. But, she cautioned, "for these democratic dreams to be realized women must be equal partners in the work ahead." The new initiative may help. But, she continued, "This won't be easy, it never is."