Angela Benander, alumna ‘98, returned to Albion College on March 27 as the chief communications officer for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. This year’s Anna Howard Shaw lecturer opened not with policy, but a story.
Her maternal grandmother, Shirley Jarrett, was born in Detroit in 1927 and raised by adoptive parents who, according to Benander, were not especially expressive. Despite that quiet upbringing, Benander said Jarrett grew into a “force” of a woman, a teacher and a “walker” who never got her driver’s license.
“She was crazy,” Benander said. “When she decided you were going to do something, you were absolutely going to do it,” adding that she traces her own educational lineage to women like Jarrett.
Benander said her upbringing from “midwestern daughters of Scandinavian immigrants who believed in God and the value of educating women” shaped her childhood in a small Michigan town, “surrounded by woods and farmland for 20 miles in every direction,” where she said, “there was no room for reinvention, ever.”
By the second grade, Benander “got into” politics, polling her second grade class on the presidential election and handing out campaign posters, she said.
“I was obviously a future political propagandist,” Benander said.
From Albion Student to Political Communicator
Benander said her obsession with politics merged with her love for Albion during a summer camp experience in middle school, when she fell in love “irrationally and eternally” with the campus. However, once Benander enrolled at Albion, she said she “struggled” academically, socially and culturally.
While exploring a career in national politics, Benander said she was told by her advisor that Washington D.C. was too competitive and that she might want to consider a career in city planning instead.
What changed her trajectory, she said, were two things.
One, her experience living in Dean Hall – then still a women’s dorm – where she began calling herself “maybe a feminist.” Two, her membership in the Gerald R. Ford Institute for Leadership in Public Policy and Service, which led to an internship in Washington D.C. At that moment her “Albion experience really started to click” was when she took a class with emeritus professor of political science Charles Schutz, Benader said.
“If you came in with a half-baked idea, he would lean back in his chair, narrow his eyes and gracefully dismantle your argument, joint by joint,” Benander said.
That academic rigor, she said, gave her a rare kind of confidence.
“It’s not that I wasn’t afraid or unsure – I was terrified,” Benander said. “But I was prepared.”
A Career in Public Service
Her career took her back to Washington, D.C., where she worked with national Democratic figures, including Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., Harry Reid, D-Nev., and former President Barack Obama when he was a senator of Illinois. In high-pressure policy meetings, there were moments when the room would go quiet and the focus would shift to her, Benander said.
“It was my responsibility to say what I thought,” Benander said. “To stand in my knowledge, my education, my experience and my Midwestern perspective.”
Growing up in a conservative town gave her practice in “finding that commonality, finding that thing in their life to talk about it from a place of both empathy and narrative, telling the story,” Benander said.
Communicating Through Controversy
Benander said she currently serves on Benson’s executive leadership team, where she oversees communications and media relations. She added that recent efforts have focused on proposed legislation requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register or vote, which “is very restrictive; hundreds of thousands of people will basically not be able to vote.”
Unjust legislation would have a disproportionate impact on women, low-income individuals and Native American voters, Benander said.
Benander concluded her lecture by acknowledging the current political climate, adding that she still encourages students to express themselves freely and find “the courage to speak, sing badly, shout, swear – even if your voice shakes.”
“I’m afraid,” Benander said. “But I’m going to be afraid and fight anyway.”
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