welcome to conversations with the candidates a program of the league of women voters of washington county pennsylvania our goal is to help you the voter hear from the candidates in their own words the election is tuesday november third citizens must register to vote before october fifth in addition to the regular offices up for election this month there's a special election for the thirty seventh district of the pennsylvania state sen two nominees were chosen by their parties to be the nominees and the voters will now decide which one will get the seat our candidate today is whether  nominee for the state senate seat and i'd like to ask her heather will you tell us a little bit about your background culture certainly and thank you for having me here and i want to thank the league of women voters too for all your work to engage  government and i'm very grateful for your service sir thank you for having me here so you know i'm really running for the senate because i think it's important for the families in the senate district thirty seven to be represented up in harrisburg and i know how hard folks are working you know just to get by i live in mount lebanon with my husband and i have thirteen year old son and i've been proud to be the c e o of the women and girls foundation for the last twelve years and i'm also proud alumni of carnegie mellon university but before all of that you know i was just a kid growing up and when we were growing up things got a little bit tough for us so when i was three my parents divorced and my mom found herself not yet thirty with two children under the age of six and you know she didn't have a college degree and so what happened was she went to school at night two were several different part time jobs during the day and she also had to go on food stamps so that we could have something to when she finally got her degree she was able to get a job with the government actually as an accountant and that brought health benefits and a lot of economic security to her family that we haven't had before and so when we you know all of these issues around whether it's when people need some support you know to be able to get back on their feet or when we're talking about public education you know these are issues that are really close to my heart  because you know i've had that experience and i know that sometimes you're just working so hard and you feel like you can't get your head above water what skills and qualifications do you feel that you would bring to the role of senator but the women and girls foundation for the you know the last twelve years one of my favorite programs is one we created called girl god and it we take a hundred girls to harrisburg many of them might be listening and watching the series now we take them to harrisburg just out of their state legislators so they can get a sense of what public office is like and that certainly has brought me to harrisburg not just once a year with the girls but throughout the year we are engaged in working with our legislators to make sure that they understand the impact of any piece of public policy on women and girls and working families and so i have had that experience of going to harrisburg and looking in debt that policy and understanding all the intricate parts of our state budget that has been part of my job for the last twelve years but before that i also worked in the private sector and i think that's important i was in marketing and business development and i help small businesses raise and your capital so i've had experience in the private sector and in the nonprofit sector i was an elected school board member and i think that's important to bring many different perspectives to the table as a legislator but to always remember what's most important first which is when i'm in harrisburg i want to be able to look at a piece of legislation or talk with my colleagues about well how is this going to impact real families on the ground here in senate district thirty seven in but throughout all of the commonwealth haven't you also been involved in stem getting stem education for girls yes little girls to take those science classes and i have in fact the carnegie science center here in pittsburgh is is extraordinary and i'm and i'm sure many of your viewers have been there themselves and when i first one of the first jobs i had actually when i was at college at carnegie mellon i was hired to work on mr rogers neighborhood which was still on production at w q and i was i had the real privilege of getting to work with fred rogers and the team there for five years till the production was was over and actually i graduated from college and you know one of the things that the only communication thing which is the company that produced mr rogers neighborhood one of the things that fred was so passionate about was girls and science and so they collaborated with the science center and other foundations in town to create the girls math and science project so it is a project that i just adored and women and girls has partnered had partnered with them for many years and and certainly we think that one of the economic ladder is for women and girls and boys and children in our community is is definitely getting a hunger and desire to be more engaged in engineering and those kinds fields there are a lot of important issues facing the pennsylvania legislature and first is getting a working budget it looks like the two issues that are blocking passage of a budget or liquor privatization and pension issues for public employees could you comment about those two issues how you would feel about them certainly first of it ok i'd like to talk about just the concept of the budget impass that's all right so you know one of the things that i think is frustrating for all of us is that we've been in this whole pattern this tug of war for so many months when we bring the girls of girls to harrisburg in june that's usually when the the budget get passed and here we are in october and we still don't have a budget approved and they are social services throughout our communities that are struggling and suffering because of that but have had to tap into credit lines or consider laying people off and it is quite heartbreaking that this budget impasse is hurting our community's most vulnerable most specifically and i think that's something that we all need to really make sure that our legislators understand and really come back to the table and negotiate i bring this up because several years ago back in two thousand and thirteen there was a budget impasse at the federal level and so you might remember that it was it was several weeks and eventually what happened was the women of the u s senate got together and started to broker a compromise solution and the reason they could do that is because the women of the senate both parties have much have monthly dinners together and so every month they have dinner together the only rule is they can't talk about public policy but they can talk about their families and what's going on in their lives and because of that they get to know each other as people and so when it came down to the budget impasse what they could do was come to the table and start a conversation like this what do we agree on let's talk about what we agree on and what our mutual goals are and then let's build from there and so i think part of what's problematic about what's happening in harrisburg right now is that as you describe everyone starting the conversation with where they disagree and so until they settle the issues where they disagree the most they won't get back to the table around all the important things and the shame of that is that they actually probably agree on a lot of the really important things like public education like taking care of our seniors so so i think that that is for me you know one of the most tragic parts of what's occurring right now and it's also for me the kind of legislator i hope to be sadly when i'm all at elected on november third my first vote could end up being our state budget and that would be very frustrating for all of us  certainly if i get there and we're still in this impasse one of the first questions i'll be asking is what do we agree on and can we start there very interesting to turn the whole thing around yeah well i was on the agreement absolutely i mean you know  you and i were having some sort of challenges friends or colleagues we would great if we were going to have a successful negotiation it always helps to start with what do you agree on and then you have some core values that you agree on and because all of our elected officials have been elected by the people of the commonwealth there just has to be some core values there even if we start with very small and you know small steps like do we believe in the economic development of our quality of life quality of education you know can we at least start with these basic framework for framework values and i think that too often we end up in this partisan tug of war you know where people are at the streams and trying to pull each other to the extreme position but really what most pennsylvanians really war want is for our government to serve us and serve the majority that's really here in the middle you know i feel embarrassed to  for or against pension reform well here's the truth of it you know governor corbett who is or republican who went into office saying he was going to privatized the liquor sales in our state and he had a completely controlled legislature of  wanted to do that too they could not figure out how to do it and the reason is that the the liquor sales the liquor board you know is a very dedicated revenue source to our state and nobody especially the republican party wants to increase taxes on anyone and so what's hard is how do you find that secure stable revenue that our schools our police departments our roads rely on how do you make sure you have that secure revenue if you take the liquor store revenue away and until they answer that question along with the additional question of if you privatized how can you ensure that the workers that are employed by those those employers will have living wages and benefits so that  pennsylvania can have jobs that sustain them and their families so these are the two core questions with this issue one how do we ensure that we have the stain of all revenue for our commonwealth and to how do we ensure that the employers whether it's the state employer or private employer is providing livable wages and benefits to the families and that for me is what it's about so instead of am i for or against bigger privatization what i'll say is i'm for sustainable revenue sources  to our state and i'm for livable wages and jobs that are that our community kids can raise their families on so those are the issues on which you feel you're running the protections for working families absolutely absolutely as an advocate women and girls foundation you know we're so often going up to harrisburg to talk about pay quality or we're going up to talk about how an increase in the minimum wage would help strengthen the economic security of families in our region or we're talking about you know paid sick leave and no parent should have to decide between leaving an incredibly young sick child at home alone or losing his or her job we are trying to do that would never want to parent to make that decision and so when i've gone to harrisburg to advocate for these kinds of things one of the things that's broken my heart is that too often the person on the other side of the table will come back and talk with us and it's like talking point you know they are talking about  they're talking about you know what it would take to actually raise a family keep food on the table make sure that one health crisis wouldn't bankrupt at the only you know they very much there are very very large corporate interests that have heavily invested in our legislature and i think that it's important that corporations are supported so that we have a thriving job force and economic forth but we also at the end of the day have to remember that it is about working families and i plan to be that voice for them in harrisburg well i see we don't have a whole lot of time left so i wanted to give you a chance to tell the voters why they should vote for you well thank you for that opportunity you know as we've discussed and someone who you know started out was very modest background and and i turned up because what really i learned from that experience as a kid was that education is critical education is critical that union jobs and and employers who provide health care benefits and livable wages that that's how we come that's how families thrive so i ask you to send me to harrisburg to be our voice to be your voice there championing the families that live and work throughout our community you can have another minute if you would like so you know the other reason i think that it's important to to what's important to talk about is who's behind you know my campaign and this isn't a very short campaign it's a special election and we have families and you know there's no millionaires or billionaires behind this campaign it is absolutely run the engine of this campaign are the people of this community and i think that's critically important that whoever goes to harrisburg has our best interests at heart and i do strongly believe and i'm that person thank you very much thank you that was whether or not running for the thirty seven seat of the pennsylvania state senate thank you