#GirlPolitics: Meet Political Activist Rebecca Sive

Rebecca Sive is Academic Director of the Women in Public Leadership Executive Education Program, Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she has taught classes on women in politics. She was among Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson's inaugural appointees to the Illinois Human Rights Commission, on which she served for eight years. She is a contributor to The Huffington Post and a speaker on women and politics. She is the author of "Every Day Is Election Day: A Woman's Guide to Winning Any Office from the PTA to the White House."

How and why did you become a political activist?

I was born in New York City and my parents were very political, but I went to college at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. Do you remember Paul Wellstone [progressive Minnesota Senator from 1991 until his death in 2002]? He was my college advisor. That was an era when there was lots of campus political activity. The women's movement was getting going. One of the things Paul organized, along with colleagues at other schools, was an urban studies program in Chicago for people interested in urban affairs, political science and sociology. I came to Chicago for that program and fell in love with the city. The politics were endlessly fascinating.

 Read the entire interview in the Huffington Post.