The Suffrage Education Institute is comprised of the most recognized and award-winning authors, historians and storytellers on the subject of women’s rights and suffrage. The Institute was formed to honor the American women’s suffrage movement and to educate young people about its history through rich, interactive media and activities.
Robert P. J. Cooney, Jr. is a graphic designer and the author of “Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement,” a widely praised and beautifully illustrated history of this important nonviolent movement. Director of the Woman Suffrage Media Project since 1993, he has spent decades delving deep into the nation’s photographic archives and consulting on numerous documentary films, books, and special projects. Co-author with Helen Michalowski of “The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States,” he has designed and created publications for the National Women’s History Project and the Alliance including posters, timeline display sets, centennial updates, magazines and Gazette, “Women Win the Vote,” which encouraged national recognition of the women’s suffrage centennial. Robert’s work is in the tradition of American men who have supported women’s equality and recognized that women’s accomplishments are a central part of American history.
Connie Cordovilla serves as the treasurer of Virginia NOW, Inc. She is the organization’s immediate past president. She also serves as the co-president of the Clearinghouse on Women’s Issues. As the Assistant Director of the Human Rights and Community Relations Department for the American Federation of Teachers, where she worked for thirty years, she addressed women’s rights issues and LGBTQIA+ interests, as well as human trafficking prevention. She is lifetime member of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Pride at Work, National Organization for Women and the National Council of Negro Women.
Issues of gender equity have always been a primary concern to her both as a young woman growing up in pre-Title IX America when she was told that “nice girls don’t go into engineering,” and for her two daughters as they chose STEM-related careers. Ms. Cordovilla believes strongly that voting power, whether local, state or federal, has been the key to pressing for equity. She has served as an election officer in Fairfax County for the last twenty years.Active in her local community, she is the president of the Friends of Pimmit Barn, Inc., a nonprofit organization working to save the last dairy barn inside the Beltway. She is a proud Lion in the Vienna Host Lions Club and is president of that club for the 2022-2023 year.
Emily McCoy has served as Immediate Past Chair of the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association and Co-Chair of its Interpretation and Design Committee. She led the development of the informational content of the national outdoor informative memorial to honor American suffragists. The memorial was dedicated in 2021.
For decades Ms. McCoy has been an activist for women’s rights primarily in Virginia. She had worked on such issues as the Equal Rights Amendment, child support, divorce law, abortion rights, and the prevention of child abuse, teen pregnancy, and domestic violence, and for equality in the courts and in athletics.
She continues her advocacy through the Virginia Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) having served on and chaired its Political Action Committee and having served as lobbyist and state president. She serves on the Fairfax County Commission for Women and served on the National Association of Commissions for Women (NACW) as secretary and vice president. She has also served on the state-wide Child Support Advisory Committee, and the Virginia Supreme Court’s Task Force on Gender Bias in Virginia Courts. Her activist awards include Lady Fairfax, Virginia NOW Lifetime Achievement for Outstanding Service, the NACW Recognition Award, and a Virginia Museum of History and Culture’s 2020 Changemaker. She currently serves on the Boar of the National Women’s History Alliance, and is retired from her post as principal systems engineer with the MITRE Corporation.
Nancy Lyons Sargeant is an award-winning broadcast news journalist with extensive national and local radio experience working as an anchor for NPR, AP Radio Network, Unistar, Marketwatch, and CBS Radio. She is currently the mid-day national news anchor on Bloomberg Radio (SiriusXM Channel 119) and local news anchor on Bloomberg 99-1, WDCH-FM, in Washington, D.C. During her career, she has received numerous national awards, including a national Edward R. Murrow Award for spot news coverage of 9/11, as well as a George Foster Peabody Award for a series on those victimized by crime. She also received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for a series on poverty.
As chair of the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association, she helped raise more than $3 million dollars to complete the garden-style, Turning Point Suffragist Memorial — the first national memorial to cover the entire arc of the suffrage movement.
Susan Sheats has over forty years of experience in leadership roles in the travel and hospitality industry, currently heading World Exposures travel agency, she curates international ours. Previously she directed sales for National Geographic Expeditions, overseeing the national travel vertical. As VP Business Development, with American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), she provided leadership for the strategic development and implementation of an effective global sales plan generating millions in sponsorship, advertising, education, marketing, research and tradeshow revenue while overseeing all revenue generating departments within the association.
AS VP Business Development at Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) she supervised sponsorship sales globally for the largest business travel convention in the world. As National Account Manager – Travel Advertising, Washington Post Media, she developed both plans for national and international travel segment clients.
Her entrepreneurial experience began in 1990 when she founded Southern Exposures with four multi-line travel sales representatives, which evolved into World Exposures, an innovative national sales network covering 19 major markets throughout North America.
Sue holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Architectural History from The College of Charleston. She is active in numerous civic activities; is the Chairman of the Board for OPEN International, a school in rural Senegal. Sue has served in many roles within her church to include past Chairman of Church Council and Chairman of the Trustees. Sue has been an active CERT (Civilian Emergency Response Team) member since 2001 and is an officer in her Rotary Club.