Laura Berman

Nonprofit helps women gain power

Saunteel Jenkins was a political long shot -- an insider's pick who had never been a TV star or Motown singer -- when she announced her intention to run for Detroit City Council.

But in May, she took her three-minute stump speech to a one-day boot camp for women interested in politics and, at the end of the day, she walked out with a new speech and a sense of confidence that wore well on the long campaign trail.

Next week, she and actress Geena Davis will meet at the Motown Mansion, at a fundraiser for a nonprofit group that sponsored the camp that helped polish Jenkins' political skills.

Davis is no politician, but she played the president on a short-lived TV series. That was just one of several roles in which the actress has embodied a striving or powerful woman, a woman reaching beyond what others believe she can grasp.

Playing those roles -- becoming an icon of strength and prowess on the screen -- rubbed off on the actress, though. Art doesn't only imitate life: It can change it.

"We're beyond being ready for a woman president," she said, during a telephone interview Monday. "That's so 20th century."

But her roles impinge on real life, even in Michigan. On Nov. 18, Davis is headed to Detroit, as a board member of the White House Project, a nonprofit that's directly helping women reach for political power, the same organization that helped Jenkins and three other local women win political office last week.

"Those roles really had a huge impact on me. They made me realize how few opportunities women had to feel pumped up and great after a movie. I wanted women to feel great about themselves," says Davis, whose personal journey has taken her from a career as a 22-year-old fashion model to a 53-year-old role model for American women.

The White House Project planted itself in a Grand Rapids office two years ago, and the results were immediate.

Jenkins found the training more helpful than she had expected, wishing only that it had lasted longer: "I gave the speech, incorporating many of the changes suggested that day, often during the campaign," she says.

Adrienne Davis won a seat on the school board in Plymouth, the beneficiary, she says, of training in grass-roots politics, use of the media, and debate tactics that she might not have been able to acquire otherwise. She also benefited from a scholarship. Other candidates get stipends for child care and travel, enabling them to participate.

"We try to eliminate the barriers that slow women down," says Shannon Garrett, director of the Great Lakes Region office.

In the last 10 years, women have effectively proved their political mettle in Michigan, which now has females serving as governor, U.S. senator and two members of the House.

Yet women are still vastly underrepresented in public life. Even women like Anne Doyle, a former Ford Motor Co. vice president and sports broadcaster who also attended a program with the White House Project, say the training helps.

"I've been encouraging women to run for years, but it was another woman who said to me, 'Why don't you practice what you preach?' " Doyle won a seat on the Auburn Hills City Council on Nov. 3, finishing first out of 14 candidates. "I'm an example of how even women who are active in leadership roles need and benefit from an extra nudge," she says.

Geena Davis observes that women make progress and then stall. "Even in the film industry, we still have one female character for every three males, and it's been that way since 1947."

After she was cast to play the commander in chief ("You can imagine how thrilled I was that someone knew I was the perfect person to play that role."), the White House Project's founder, Marie Wilson, asked Davis to get involved. "I endorse their plan," she says simply, "because we need to get more women in positions of governing, in a timely fashion."

Time is of the essence. Believing otherwise is, well, so 20th century.

Laura Berman's column runs Tuesday and Thursday in The Detroit News and Sunday online.