Congratulations to Jan Lisa Huttner!

After 35 years in Chicago, Jan Lisa Huttner and her husband Rich moved to Brooklyn in late 2012. And as soon as she had unpacked most of her boxes, Jan reached out to us and became a member of ESVB. An active member of AAUW Chicago Branch since 1983, Jan served as Membership VP, Program VP, and Historian. She also served on the AAUW-Illinois Board as Director of Leadership Development, Director of College/University Relations, and Director of International Relations.

During her tenure as Director of College/University Relations, Jan organized the WITASWAN Project (Women in the Audience Supporting Women Artists Now), which was originally created an opportunity for joint programming between Illinois branches and their local campuses. The project was such a success that AAUW-Illinois soon found itself collaborating with WomenArts—the Fund for Women Artists—to go global. Since 2008, International SWAN Day has been celebrated at over 1,200 separate events in 20 countries (plus the USA). The next International SWAN Day is March 28, 2015, so plans for an ESVB celebration will be announced soon.

“My Dad was ‘a joiner,’ so I was raised to be ‘a joiner’ too,” says Jan. “But as an adult, especially in my work with AAUW, I have organized my own life around one single principle: Invisible Women. Too many women—not only in the past but also in the present—are ‘invisible,’ that is, not given their due either by their own cultures or by the world community at large. I want to give voice to these women not only for their sake, but on behalf of the women of the future. Women need to believe in themselves more than they do now, and one way to help them do that is to give voice to all the wonderful women who have paved the way.”
To learn more about WITASWAN and International SWAN Day, read Jan’s Book: Penny’s Picks: Fifty Movies by Women Filmmakers available from Amazon on Kindle and POD.

Caption: Jan gives us her introduction to the WITASWAN Project on October 18, 2014 at the College of Mount Saint Vincent. (Photo Credit: Laura Fieber-Minogue)