When Holly Harris Bane asks if you are a Democrat or a Republican, she doesn’t want to know whether you voted Obama or McCain. She wants to find out if you know who you are.
“Identity is everything,” says Harris Bane. For eight years, she used this mantra to coach political science students, most of them young women, as assistant director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.
“Politics is never easy. It’s never simple,” she says. “It’s a give and take, and you really do have to know yourself and know your comfort level in terms of having to make compromises.”
Harris Bane believes that young women, like the hundreds of students and interns she mentored at the Bliss Institute, face a unique challenge to running for office: They often don’t think they can. She knows this first hand.
“The first time I was asked to run for office, I choked on my crouton in my salad,” she says. “I kid you not. It’s a really scary thing for women. We’re not trained to be risk takers, and when you run for office, it’s the biggest risk you can take.”
Changing risk-averse young women into political candidates comes down to two steps, says Harris Bane: Instill a sense of identity and create opportunities for success.
By introducing students to professional, political women and providing them with support and guidance, Harris Bane has been able to do this time and time again.
“She really had an impact on a large number of students over the years,” says Megann Eberhart, a former student of Harris Bane’s who now serves as manager of government affairs at the Greater Akron Chamber. “She’s able to see something in you that you may not see.”
When Eberhart was a political science student at the University of Akron, Harris Bane helped define her career aspirations and directed her to a number of internships that led to Eberhart’s current position. Their relationship has evolved into a professional correspondence, says Eberhart, in which Harris Bane is still a great help.
“After I had my second child, I was looking to come back to work as a mother but still be closer to my children,” she says. “[Holly] was able to find me an opportunity to do that. She’s always looking out for me, always thinking about her students in ways and opportunities that come up even years later.”
Harris Bane’s diplomacy skills have evolved, too. In her current position as associate vice president for strategic initiatives and engagement at the University of Akron, she connects the right people for getting things accomplished — and by “things,” we mean “everything.” Whether university officials want to strengthen an online curriculum, establish an emergency management program with the state or develop a corrosion-engineering program, they trust Harris Bane to seek out and secure the partnerships needed to make it happen.
“I put people together,” she says. “I create opportunities, open some doors, then it’s up to them.”
And that’s the best part, she says: watching a partnership she’s formed grow and succeed on its own.
“If you are truly successful at what you do,” says Harris Bane, “you can take an idea and empower the people [by] giving them the tools for success. Then, all of a sudden, they won’t remember where the idea came from. And you won’t want them to — it’s their success. They won’t remember how it happened. They just know they have success. And that’s what counts.”
Life Lessons
When you win an election, everybody’s there. When you lose an election, nobody’s there. The only person who’s going to be there on the day you lose is you. And you have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror.
I absolutely believe in people. I believe in their potential. If they have a fire, even a little bit of fire, and you help them see themselves in a way they didn’t — just get out of the way.
Leadership is a scary place at times. You have to be able to make tough decisions. You have to have some strong female confidantes that are going to let you know their thoughts in a very honest way.
I hit political consciousness at the age of 5. I remember watching the Vietnam War on TV and saying, “Maybe I won’t be able to influence policies that prevent war, but at least I can be active in my world.”
Politics is not for the faint of heart. If you enter a piece of legislation as a piece of bread and it comes out as Swiss cheese, people want to know what happened. What happened is politics.
I remember my mother saying to me, “No matter what choices you make, you’re going to feel like you slighted the other one. You just have to learn to live with the dissonance.” I’ve never achieved it.