Donna Milgram, the Executive Director of the National Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science (IWITTS) has dedicated her career to helping women find places in a vast range of careers that have been traditionally male - from engineering and automechanics to law enforcement. In the beginning of her career, Ms. Milgram's work focused on helping women "survive" the workplace, but she quickly saw that institutional change was critical, and shifted to working with employers and the education and job training systems to assist them in developing more female-friendly recruitment and retention practices. In 1994, Ms. Milgram founded IWITTS, the only national organization working solely to provide the tools to integrate women into male-dominated careers via training, publications, products, e-strategies, and technical assistance. IWITTS also provides support to its secondary audience, women and girls, via its on-line community www.womentechworld.org.
A nationally recognized expert on women in the male-dominated workplace, Ms. Milgram testified before Congress as an expert witness on the "Sexual Harassment of Women in Nontraditional Occupations" and on the "School-To-Work Opportunities Act" about the absence of young women from many U.S. Department of Labor School-To-Work demonstration sites. She has appeared on CNN, Fox Morning News, C-Span and National Public Radio, and been quoted in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, Police, and Law and Order. Ms. Milgram has also authored two articles for Police Chief Magazine and for Skills USA: VICA and is regularly quoted and published in industry trade journals in education and law enforcement.
Ms. Milgram has served as Principal Investigator for three National Science Foundation projects and a National Institute of Justice grant. She also led IWITTS's partnership with the Cisco Learning Institute /Cisco Gender Initiative. Ms. Milgram is a regular speaker at national conferences, including Cisco Networkers, League for Innovation in the Community College, International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference, and the National Association of Private Industry Councils. Additionally, she has been a trainer on women's issues for police chiefs at the FBI Academy.
Ms. Milgram regularly conducts national, state and local workshops and consults around the country; she has worked in 42 of the 50 states. Ms. Milgram has authored an extensive list of multi-media publications in her field including print publications, Web sites, a CD and the widely acclaimed teacher-training video, "School-To-Work: Preparing Young Women for High Skill, High-Wage Careers."
Her past affiliations include Board Member of the National Association of Private Industry Councils, member of the Federal Committee on Apprenticeship, Board Member of Girls, Inc. of the Island City, where she also chaired the Board Development Committee, and member of the Technology Committee of the Alameda Chamber of Commerce. Ms. Milgram has also participated in the leadership program of the Anti-Defamation League.
Ms. Milgram graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and received a Masters degree from the University of Maryland, where she was Valedictorian for her school. Ms. Milgram was a Congressional Fellow on Women in Public Policy and spent a year working on Capitol Hill for Congresswoman Connie Morella of Maryland.
