Betty Ireland: Leading By Example
At MetroValley, we believe it’s important to expose the next generation of women—our daughters, nieces and granddaughters—to the influence of powerful women in the hope that they will be encouraged to leave their own footprint of leadership on the Mountain State. Recently, we sat down with Secretary of State Betty Ireland to discuss the importance of instilling the next generation of women with confidence and leadership skills, as well as the accomplishments she’s achieved as the first woman elected to the executive branch of state government in West Virginia and where the future will take her.
MV: What is something you know now that you didn’t know when you were younger?
IRELAND: Girls can do anything.
MV: How do you think serving as the Secretary of State has changed you both as a woman and a professional?
IRELAND: I don’t think I’ve changed at all. This is a job—just another in a series of jobs. I bring the same skill set to this job that I have to all my other jobs. The biggest change, the biggest new thing I’ve learned, is how to survive as a woman in the male dominated political stratosphere. Not only am I the only one of my gender at the Constitutional officer level, but I’m also the only one of my political party. I think it’s been very healthy for people who are different to learn how to get along—for men to have to deal with women in business and political matters, and for Democrats and Republicans to have to sit down and get along. We’ve all come through it; we’re still here.
MV: One of our goals is to encourage women to be involved in the legislative process. Is there anything that you want to communicate to encourage them?
IRELAND: I would say to those parents out there and would-be parents to encourage their daughters not to run away from conflict. I would encourage them to be involved in sports—team sports and individual sports—so that they understand that it’s okay to compete, it’s okay to fight for yourself and what you believe in, and it’s certainly good to be part of a team. Then we will start raising daughters who understand the ground rules so that they can run for public office. We need more women in public office and we talk to high school students and college students all over the state about this. We get them registered to vote and we try really hard to get them involved in the political process early and not wait. We have really good voter registration, but we have a very low voter turnout with the 18- 24 year-olds.
MV: Women got the right to vote at the price of incredible sacrifices.
IRELAND: Yes, incredible sacrifices. You know, you say to these young people, ‘Can you imagine a time when your mother, your grandmother, your sister or your aunt couldn’t vote?’ and they don’t know anything about that. We talk about 18 year-olds winning the right to vote during the Vietnam conflict; we talk about certain African-American voters in the South during the early 60s who could not vote even though the Constitution said they could. We tell them to not forget the history that preceded their being able to sign a piece of paper at the courthouse so that they could vote, but we also tell them that’s only half of the equation. You’ve got to show up at the polls and we make it so easy now. We’ve got early voting and you can do absentee voting from college. We really need to get our younger folks out to vote in more numbers.
MV: Do you feel like you had to be tougher than everyone else to get to where you are?
IRELAND: I think in our society, women are not raised to be tough. That’s okay. You don’t have to be a banshee, but you have to be able to confront, you have to be able to stand up and sometimes shout about what you believe in and what you like. We women are compromisers. We like consensus before we walk out that door. We’ll say, ‘Come on back here and let’s do this.’ As the mothers and nurturers, that’s what we do and that’s okay. That has its place in business and in politics, certainly, and we need more of that, but if you’re going to survive as a woman in politics, you need to know that it is a blood sport and you’ve got to know how to survive.
MV: Tell us about how you view society today—not only in West Virginia but in general. Do you see changes that worry you?
IRELAND: I don’t think we expect excellence as much as we should in our kids and in our students. I don’t think we expect excellence in our political leaders. I think we let our politicians get by with things that we maybe heretofore have not let them get by with. I worry about world peace. I worry about people fighting and not being able to come together and reach appropriate decisions. I worry about the effect that drugs are having on our society, particularly on some of our young people in West Virginia. We have certain segments of the work force that can’t work because they can’t pass sections of the drug test. If you talk to any employer in this state, you’ll find that it’s a huge problem.
MV: Do you think things are getting better for our state?
IRELAND: I think things in certain aspects are getting better. We still need to develop a large skilled workforce in this state. I think from my perspective we need to concentrate more on what’s here, encourage entrepreneurs and encourage growth here. It’s a chicken or egg type of situation. There’s a lot wrong with business in West Virginia and how we treat businesses. We need to address that at the same time instead of trying to bring all the big companies in from out of state. We will want to do that at some point in time, but I think we need to take a closer look at our tax structure and particularly we need to take a look at our judicial system—tort reform and how the courts treat businesses in this state. There are businesses that just absolutely will not touch West Virginia because of the way our judicial system treats businesses. We have wonderful people in this state. We have to find a way to keep our young people here. We have to find a way to keep our college graduates here. We have to find a way to challenge our young people to be better than they are. They have to strive for excellence and then share that excellence in the state. I think we need to build more around our universities. When you have a large successful university, you’re going to attract professors and business people and professionals who will come and be a part of the community and pretty soon it takes on a larger and larger role. When you look at what’s happening around WVU in the Morgantown area, it’s unbelievable and it’s because of the university. There has to be a way to tap all that energy and all that brainpower and make it work for each university’s region.
MV: When did you realize that you were a leader?
IRELAND: I just did it, and to this day, it’s just what I do. I put my head down, I do my job. With some luck I made some good choices; I’ve made some bad choices in my life as well, but hopefully I’ve learned from those. If you’re going to be a leader, you have to learn how to lead. You have to know that people look to you to lead. You have to know how to use that power; otherwise, you’re not going to get any place and the people following you aren’t going to get any place. You have to believe in yourself.
MV: Did someone teach you how to be a leader or did you just find your own way?
IRELAND: I just learned by surviving. You learn by making good choices and capitalizing on what you bring to the table. You learn also by being aware of other people and trying to be patient and accommodating and not stepping all over other people. One thing I learned from my dad, who passed last August, is that you’ve got to pull the people up beneath you and push the people up above you.
MV: Why is that important and how do you do that?
IRELAND: I’ve been in management a lot of my life, and you don’t ever want to make it all about you as the boss. You’ve got to have an infrastructure of people to support you. In order to get them to continue to support you, you have to treat them with respect. In that respect, you pull them along. You give them every opportunity to succeed, and that’s particularly important when they are women. You can’t be so concerned with yourself that you’re afraid to empower other people to succeed. That’s how you\ pull people up beneath you. You’d better understand, though, that the people who are ahead of you—your boss, the people to whom you answer, the public when you’re in public life—you had better push them up as well.
MV: How do you balance being both powerful and feminine? Does that take a while to grow into?
IRELAND: No, you’re born with certain physical attributes. The fact that I’m almost six feet tall doesn’t hurt my presence. You had better make the most of your physical attributes because that’s what people see first. We’re in a society where that first impression counts. I try to wear the right clothing and the right colors. I’ve had that session where it tells you what colors you should wear. I try to do that. I’ve got good makeup and good hair, but truth be told I’d rather be in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Being in business and being in politics involves being in your head and in your heart, it involves how you look and how you present yourself. You have to be really careful that you’re not a phony, that you’re not a fake—that you are the real deal. It’s not hard if you know who you are and what you want.
MV: You had a phenomenal career prior to this office. Was the transition from the law firm to here scary?
IRELAND: No, it’s a job. I brought my skill set here from Jackson Kelly. It’s why I decided to run for Secretary of State— not because I wanted to be a politician, not because I wanted to be queen of the world. It was a job that I thought I could do.
MV: We understand that you’re not going to run for office again. How does that feel?
IRELAND: Well, it was the only decision I could make. I made this decision last spring when my father was still with us. Someone had to take the lead in taking care of 94-year-old parents because they can’t take care of themselves and I’m the one. I’m still working here every day plus I have a husband and we have four children, so I made the decision to just step out for awhile. I lost my dad last August, and the stress on my mother now, because at 93 she has lost her husband of 68 years, is getting worse. What I want your readers to understand is that I will probably be back in some capacity, and I’ll be better because I’ll have more knowledge about the health care system, about taking care of seniors, what we do well and what we don’t do well in our state, coupled with my journeys for the next few months since I’ll be here until the end of ‘08. I plan to go all over the state and meet with businesses big and small, asking them, ‘What is the state doing well for you? What are we not doing so well? What are the biggest problems that you see?’ That way, I’ll be well-equipped when the time comes if I decide to enter public office again. In all probability you haven’t seen my name on the ballot for the last time.
MV: What are some of the major things that you’ve accomplished as Secretary of State?
IRELAND: One of the things was making the state compliant with the Help America Vote Act and getting the new electronic voting machines up and running in record time. I thin we’ve made wonderful strides in the use of technology. We also recently rolled out our Address Confidentiality Program which allows victims of domestic violence, whether it’s a man or a woman, to be able to use a blind post office box for their first-class mail delivery, so that’s one more tool that they can put between them and their abuser or their stalker so they can’t be abused. It also means that these people for the first time can register to vote because when you go to the courthouse to register you have to put your address down, and if there’s someone who wants to find you to hurt you, that public record can show them where you are. It’s a neat thing because WV has a terrible history of domestic violence.
MV: What’s your favorite quote?
IRELAND: ‘What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?’
