The National Conference for College Women Student Leaders (NCCWSL) features outstanding keynote speakers. Every year, AAUW and NASPA are honored to feature these exceptional women.

AAUW and NASPA are proud to announce the 2012 Keynote Speakers:

Lilly Ledbetter
Activist and Author

Lilly Ledbetter, activist and author, has played an integral role in the fight for equal pay for women. Ledbetter worked at Goodyear Tire and Rubber in Alabama for 19 years before discovering that she was being paid less for her work than her male peers despite receiving recognition as a top performer at the company. In 1998, she filed suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and was awarded back pay and other remedies in a jury trial. In 2007, however, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that ruling and 40 years of EEOC precedent in a 5-4 decision that significantly narrowed the interpretation of pay equity laws. The justices ruled that employees could only file a wage discrimination complaint within 180 days of the original pay decision, leaving women, minorities, and others in Ledbetter’s situation with no recourse.

In 2009 President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, reversing the court’s decision and giving women across the country the opportunity to fight for fair wages. Since then she has continued to advocate for the Paycheck Fairness Act and other equal pay measures.

Ledbetter spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2008, received an honorary doctor of law degree from the CUNY School of Law in 2010, and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame a year later. Her book, Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond, will be published in February 2012.

Mayda Del Valle
Artist and Youngest Winner of the
White House Poetry Jam

Mayda Del Valle has been described by the Chicago Sun Times as having “a way with words. Sometimes they seem to flutter and roll off her lips. Other times they burst forth like a comet streaking across a nighttime sky.” A proud native of the South Side of Chicago, she has appeared on six episodes of Def Poetry Jam on HBO and was a contributing writer and original cast member of the Tony-award winning Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. She also toured with Norman Lear’s Declare Yourself spoken word tour, a nonprofit, nonpartisan project created to encourage young voter registration for the 2004 presidential elections. Del Valle has appeared in Urban Latino, Latina magazine, Mass Appeal, the Source, the New York Times, and was named by Smithsonian magazine as one of America’s Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences. In May 2009, she was invited to perform at the White House for President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.