Maria Shriver Continues Groundbreaking Discussion of Women on the Brink of Poverty at She Shares Conversation

Presents The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Jan. 30, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- "For too many American women, the dream of 'having it all' has morphed into 'just hanging on'," said Maria Shriver before a sold-out audience at She Shares, a conversation series presented by the Dewey Square Group. "Working women are at the core of our economy. Leave out the women, and you don't have a full and robust economy. Lead with the women, and you do." 

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140130/DC56580)

In her first appearance in Sacramento since serving as First Lady of California, Shriver, now a Special Anchor for NBC News, presented findings from The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, the third in a series of groundbreaking studies of cultural transformations affecting women and families, produced in partnership with the Center for American Progress.  The Report (www.shriverreport.org) examines the reasons that 42 million American women and the 28 million children who depend on them live at or near the brink of poverty, and proposes concrete solutions to this developing crisis.

"California continues to be a leader in working towards economic equality, from the WEConnect events we held when I was First Lady, to the paid leave legislation being introduced this month," said Shriver in a wide-ranging discussion that covered the lessons she drew from her time as First Lady, her family's legacy in the War on Poverty, as well as recent legislation in California to introduce paid sick leave. "The Shriver Report is proud to serve as a platform for a conversation about what women need in California and around the country."

During her visit to Sacramento, Shriver also delivered The Shriver Report to Governor Jerry Brown and met with members of the legislature, community leaders, administration officials, and with women living on the brink.

Shriver, who is also a New York Times best-selling author, was joined onstage by Karen Skelton, Editor-in-Chief of The Shriver Report, and by San Francisco entrepreneur Binita Pradhan, one of the women featured in the Report. "Leaving women out of the conversation about social mobility and the national economy is like benching our starting line-up," said Skelton. "This is about more than just our nation's women, it's about our families and their ability to succeed. This Shriver Report furthers a much needed conversation and offers tangible solutions as to how we move forward."  Today's She Shares discussion was moderated by Dewey Square Group's Karen Breslau and is the latest in a quarterly  conversation series launched in 2012 featuring trailblazing women who have made a difference in California and beyond.

In partnership with the California Center for Civic Participation She Shares is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that also provides mentoring and networking opportunities for future women leaders.  In the audience were six young women from the Sacramento area who were partnered with professional women from the She Shares community for a yearlong program of mentoring, workshops and career development. Each of the young women, together with her mentor, participated in a private discussion with Shriver after the event.

"It's an absolutely wonderful event for young female professionals in the Sacramento area.  The most valuable was the roundtable discussion with Maria. Her responses to our questions were relatable and personal, and we got to see a really human side of her," said She Shares mentee Lauren Michaels. "It was really important that this was a nonpartisan group. I really share Maria's ideal that it is important to connect with other people regardless of their party affiliation."

Previous She Shares conversations featured former Governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm; California First Lady and Special Counsel to the Governor Anne Gust Brown; UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi; California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye; Attorney General Kamala D. Harris; Nancy McFadden, Executive Secretary for the Office of the Governor; Oscar Nominee Jennifer Siebel Newsom, writer, producer and director of "Miss Representation"; and Matina Kolokotronis, President of Business Operations, Sacramento Kings.

She Shares is made possible through the support of our generous sponsors. They are: Skelton Strategies, Lucas Public Affairs and Thomas Law Group, Pfizer, Kaiser Permanente, Political Solutions, State Farm, Marcy Friedman, Orrick, AT&T, Gilson Government Strategies, A Woman's Nation, Long Beach City College, California State University at Long Beach, The California Museum and The California Endowment. Our media sponsors are KCRA 3 and Comstock's Magazine.

ABOUT DEWEY SQUARE GROUP
Founded in 1993 by three of the nation's leading political strategists, Dewey Square Group is a full service public affairs firm blending expertise in the corporate and political sectors to craft creative strategies and to achieve effective results. With seven fully operational offices and affiliated firms in all 50 states, Dewey Square can develop and execute a plan to reach target audiences nationally, regionally, within select states or locally. Our California practice provides communications, campaign management, grassroots organization and strategic services to a wide range of corporate, non-profit and political clients, and is home to our nationwide Social Innovation and Philanthropy Practice. With deep ties to California's most influential leaders and institutions DSG is applying private sector strategies to public sector problems by helping bring a national spotlight to important social and policy issues. www.deweysquare.com

ABOUT CALIFORNIA CENTER FOR CIVIC PARTICIPATION
The California Center for Civic Participation (Cal Center), established in 1980, originally served as the non-profit host for the widely respected California Journal Magazine, a non-partisan publication dealing with state politics. In the early 80's, Executive Director James Muldavin steered the focus of the organization toward programs to support young people in learning about, responding to, and acting in the political process.
http://californiacenter.org/about/

ABOUT THE SHRIVER REPORT
The Shriver Report is a multi-platform initiative of A Woman's Nation, the nonprofit organization founded by Maria Shriver to raise awareness, ignite conversations, and inspire impact around the defining issues and fundamental changes facing modern women. The first Shriver Report, published in 2009, examined a huge transformation in U.S. history: For the first time, women had become fully half the workforce, and even more momentously, were about two-thirds of the primary and co-breadwinners in American families—truly the engine driving the economy. We called this new state of American affairs A Woman's Nation Changes Everything, as the explosion of women becoming breadwinners changed not just the economy, but marriage, families, schools, the workplace, government, health care—everything, including men. The following year, A Woman's Nation Takes on Alzheimer's was the largest study ever to examine the cultural, social, and economic impact of the Alzheimer's epidemic, just as the nation's 78 million Baby Boomers were aging into their mid-60s—Alzheimer's territory. We reported that women were not only half the people living with the disease but also more than half of the country's unpaid caregivers. A Woman's Nation Pushes Back from the Brink is the third in the series. http://shriverreport.org/ 
For more information about She Shares visit www.sheshares.net  

SOURCE She Shares