Susan Shaer

Susan Shaer is the Executive Director for Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND). As executive director of WAND, Ms. Shaer co-chairs Win Without War, and headed Project Abolition, as well as other national projects on arms control and disarmament. She inaugurated and is on the steering committee of the Pentagon Budget Campaign.

Her influence on women, peace, and security issues is felt nationally through her work with the Clearinghouse for Women Candidates at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government, the Mass. Women’s Political Caucus, and internationally through her training of women candidates in Mexico and Guyana, and work with nonprofits in Kosovo as a consultant for National Democratic Institute.

Susan is one of the 100 international panelists invited to speak at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Previously, Ms. Shaer served as president of the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts and on the national board of directors of the League. In that capacity in the LWV, she served as one of two non-lawyers on the Massachusetts Supreme Court Gender Bias in the Courts study. In addition, she was in a delegation to NATO headquarters in Brussels and Germany before the wall came down, and to the World Conference on Women in Moscow in 1987, where she heard Gorbechev speak on Glosnost.

Susan was awarded the OMB Watch Public Interest Hall of Fame Award, the National Priorities Project Frances Crowe Award plus the NPP Hero Award, and New England Women in Cable Award for Outstanding Moderator for her cable public affairs television program, “The Front Page.”

Susan originated and was the first president of the Mass Budget and Policy Center, a progressive tax policy group. Susan served as president of the Ford Hall Forum and now co-chairs the advisory board. She helped instigate the first get-women-in-elected-office organization called WomenIn. She was a founding member of EMILY’s List, a board member of Planned Parenthood and on the advisory board of EMERGE and Teen Voices. Susan was a political commentator for WBZ radio and NECN television. She admits to a devotion to electing good women to office, fair tax policy that funds unmet domestic needs, and a riveted attention to finding excess in the Pentagon budget.

In her spare time, she reads novels, classic and new, and cherishes every moment with her friends, daughters, their husbands, and her two grandchildren.