Executive Circle

The Executive Circle is made up of women leaders from around the country whose lives show their dedication to supporting those coming up behind them.  They serve as WUFPAC advisors and mentors.

v    Stephenie Foster

Stephenie Foster, vice president for public policy at Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), has more than a decade of experience in politics and policymaking and a lifelong commitment to progressive causes.

As chief of staff to Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), and later, to Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), she was the principal strategist for legislative outreach and political operations. Stephenie served as the national director of women's outreach for the victorious Clinton/Gore 1996 campaign, with responsibility for coordinating coast-to-coast efforts to mobilize women voters. Subsequently, Stephenie was appointed general counsel of the General Services Administration (GSA) under President Clinton. At GSA she oversaw all legal activities and served as the agency's chief ethics official.

Between February 2001 and February 2003, Stephenie served as the director of public policy for one of PPFA's key coalition partners, People For the American Way. She directed lobbying and advocacy efforts on issues including civil rights and civil liberties, judicial nominations, and the separation of church and state. More recently, she has engaged in advocacy and campaign training in the United States and overseas, working for a broad range of progressive groups including the Women's EDGE Coalition and the Policy Council on Afghan Women.

Stephenie has also played a number of key leadership and outreach roles in other presidential campaigns, including Kerry-Edwards 2004 and Gore-Lieberman 2000.

Stephenie has a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree from Cornell University. She graduated cum laude from the University of California, Irvine. Prior to moving to Washington, DC, in 1993, she practiced law in San Francisco.

v    Deborah Perry Piscione

Deborah Perry Piscione is a bestselling author, on-air political commentator, and founding partner and president of the Choose 2 Lead Women’s Foundation, a non-profit organization in Washington, DC. She is the co-author (with Dr. Julianne Malveaux) of a Washington Post bestseller entitled Unfinished Business:  A Democrat and a Republican Take on the 10 Most Important Issues Women Face (Perigee, September 2002), and a television and radio commentator who serves as a regular guest of political programs on CNN and National Public Radio.  Additionally, she teaches at American University as a professorial lecturer at the Women and Politics Institute.  At Choose 2 Lead, Deborah and her colleagues conduct original research and trainings, and challenge working women to be leaders, not spectators, in their work, families and communities.

As a television and radio commentator, Deborah has appeared as a guest on the Today Show, Wolf Blitzer Reports, The McLaughlin Group, The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and Politically Incorrect, and has been a featured guest on PBS, BET, and National Public Radio programs including Justice Talking, Public Interest and The Tavis Smiley Show.  She has been featured in leading women’s magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal, in newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, The Washington Times, Greensboro News & Record, Sacramento Bee, and Miami Herald, and in UPI wire services.  In addition to her writing and television career, Deborah is a public speaker and lecturer, and has participated in the Penguin Putnam author series at CUNY in New York, in a Congressional Women’s Caucus event on Capitol Hill, and has spoke to corporations such as McDonalds and Microsoft. 

Early in her career, Deborah served as a congressional staffer for then-U.S. Senator Connie Mack (R-FL), U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), and a political appointee for President George Bush (41^st president), and specialized her legislative and executive career in foreign policy.  Deborah received her graduate degree in international economics at Georgetown University and undergraduate degree in communications at Florida State University.  Deborah currently resides in the Palo Alto area with her husband and twin boys.

v     Eileen O'Connor

Eileen O'Connor, a counsel in Orrick's Washington, D.C. office, is a member of the firm's Litigation Group. She is a 24-year veteran journalist with experience working for ABC News and CNN in London, Moscow, Tokyo and Washington, D.C. Ms. O'Connor served as chief researcher and producer for ABC News Peter Jennings overseas from 1981 to 1986, moving to Moscow and then to CNN in 1989. While in Moscow from 1986 to 1997, Ms. O'Connor covered the fall of communism; Russian politics and business; organized crime; the wars in Afghanistan, Sarajevo, Nagrono Karabakh, Ossetia, and Chechnya, where her coverage was nominated for an Emmy. Her live reporting of the attempted coups in 1991 and 1993 won some of American journalism's highest honors, as did her investigation of Al Qaeda post 9/11.

After serving as CNN bureau chief in Moscow, Ms. O'Connor was White House correspondent and national correspondent covering the Clinton Administration, and most notably, investigations into campaign finance, Monica Lewinsky, and the Marc Rich pardon. Ms. O'Connor left CNN at the end of 2001 to pursue a law degree and help start the Legal Crisis Communications practice at Patton Boggs, LLP as a strategic policy adviser. After leaving Patton Boggs, LLP in 2004, she became president of the International Center for Journalists, a non-profit organization dedicated to train journalists to build a free and independent press in emerging democracies and to improve the quality of journalism worldwide.

v    Susan Mills

Susan Mills is the Director of Program Development for MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, where she oversees the creation and production of programming for television broadcast, home video, publishing, and interactive markets. Most recently, she is the Executive Producer of “Generation Next: Speak Up. Be Heard.”  She also produced  “Free Speech: Jim Lehrer with Ben Bradlee” an extended interview broadcast on PBS on June 19, 2006 that explored Bradlee’s experience as an editor and current issues facing journalism.  Mills was Executive Producer for “Do You Speak American?” a three hour TV special featuring Robin MacNeil that premiered on PBS on January 5, 2005 and “The First Lady: Public Expectations, Private Lives, broadcast on PBS, October 25^th, 2004.  Mills also produced “Time to Choose; a By the People Election Special for PBS on October 21^st, 2004. 

She was the executive producer for “Lady Bird, Portrait of a First Lady” for PBS the first in a series on the modern First Ladies. In 2000, she was the executive producer for 3 MacNeil/Lehrer projects, “Debating our Destiny” a two hour PBS documentary special with Jim Lehrer which was nominated for an Emmy, PBS’ “Via Dolorosa” playwright David Hare’s one man Broadway show about the Middle East and PBS’  one hour history of the Hudson’s Bay Company,  “Empire of the Bay” with Robin MacNeil.

As managing producer for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in New York, she oversaw its video documentary production and special projects.  She also helped pioneer an experimental interactive/multimedia collaboration between Apple Computers and the NewsHour.

Susan began her TV career at CBS News where she helped develop and produce the innovative, award-winning programs for children, In the News and 30 Minutes.  In the early 1980’s she covered Latin America and the Philippines, producing news stories from the rise of the Sandinistas in Managua to the fall of Ferdinand Marcos in Manila… and reporting on war in the Falklands, drug running in Bolivia and death squads in El Salvador.

Susan’s awards include four National Emmys, eleven Emmy nominations, and—for programs she has produced—the George Foster Peabody Award, Columbia University’s DuPont Award, Ohio State’s Journalism Award, and the Gavel Award from the American Bar Association.  She is a graduate of Wells College where she has served on the Board of Trustees.

v    Jill Schuker

Jill A. Schuker is President of JAS International Group, an international strategic communications, issue management, message, and counseling firm based in Washington, D.C.. She has worked especially with government and societies in transition on a range of civil society, reform, policy and leadership issues. She served in the Clinton Administration as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Public Affairs at the National Security Council. Earlier in the Administration she served as head of Public Affairs for Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown. She  previously served in government as Counselor for Press and Public Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and as Deputy Spokeswoman at the U.S. Department of State. She also was Executive Director of the bipartisan New England Congressional Caucus on Capitol Hill. 

Ms. Schuker has published numerous articles on public diplomacy and security issues and served as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts at Tufts University. She is also a Fellow at the University of Southern California Center for Public Diplomacy. She was both a Ford Foundation and European Community Fellow, has served as an international election observer, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Board member of the Atlantic Council of the United States, in addition to a number of other non-profit Boards, Advisory Boards and Councils.