THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Hedy Ratner
“The Empowerment of Women is the Raison d’Etre of My Life.”
Founder, Co-President Emerita, Women’s Business Development Center. Founding Member, Illinois Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women. President, Metropolitan Chicago YWCA. Founder and President, IL WPC. Founding Member, Midwest Women’s Center. Director/Convener, Chicago Women in Broadcasting. Founder/President, Women in Film, Chicago. Women’s Health Task Force of Illinois. Founder, Illinois Women’s Business Ownership Council. Founder, Alliance of Minority and Female Contractors Association. Chicago Foundation for Women.
Interviewed by Kathy Rand, VFA Executive VP, October 2019
Photo 1. Founders of Women’s Business Development Center, Carol Dougal and Hedy Ratner. Photo 2. Hedy with Gloria Steinem.
More About Hedy:
- Start TV – Hedy Ratner: Empowering Women and Changing the World
- Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum Oral History
- Women’s Economic Summit – 1998 Master Plan
- Hedy’s Testimony – Women’s Business Issues: Hearing Before the Committee on Small Business, House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, First Session, Washington, DC, April 18, 1991, Volume 4
- Dynamic Duo – Carol Dougal and Hedy Ratner – Chicago Tribune August 25, 2013
- Selected clippings 1975 – 2011
- The Dinner Party Project
- Women’s Business Development Center
- Chicago Foundation for Women
- The Chicago Network
- Cited in Barbara Love’s Book – Feminists Who Changed America – page 375