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Congratulations, Graduates Lilly Ledbetter and Senator Amy Klobuchar addressed Walden’s 42nd graduating class.
 Lilly Ledbetter U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) gave the opening remarks at Walden’s 42nd commencement ceremony on July 25, 2009, in Minneapolis. Klobuchar is an advocate for health and education reform and a sponsor of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Klobuchar told the graduates, “Each of you has the power to effect change and you don’t have to live in the White House, or work in the state house, to do it.” Lilly Ledbetter, namesake of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, gave the commencement address. Walden President Jonathan A. Kaplan presented Lilly Ledbetter with the Presidential Award for Leadership in Social Change for “making positive social change a reality for millions and millions of women.” Lilly Ledbetter Rallies Graduates to Effect Social Change Addressing the graduates, Ledbetter recounted her career and the years of legal proceedings that ended when President Barack Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act—the first bill he signed into law as president—on January 29, 2009. Toward the end of her 20-year career as a manager at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Ala., Ledbetter received an anonymous note informing her that she had been paid consistently less than her male coworkers over the years. Unwilling to be treated as a “second-class citizen,” Ledbetter filed a discrimination report and sued Goodyear. Though she saw no monetary award for her fight for equal pay, her work prompted the campaign for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which now ensures that victims of pay discrimination have more than 180 days after their first discriminatory paycheck to file a complaint. Ledbetter told Walden graduates, “The true test of a person is not so much what happens to us, but how we react to it … Each of us, every day, breaks through barriers simply because we choose to believe that the future can be better.” Watch the archived webcast. August Ponder front page
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©2009 Walden University |