Meet the President
by Garry VanGorder |
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Remarkable in its simplicity, the message is one Williams brought with her last summer as she became Ithaca College's seventh --- and first female --- president. The 49-year-old Williams succeeded James J. Whalen, who in July concluded a 22-year term here. "I believe that over the last 25 years society has changed quite a bit in terms of its messages to girls and women regarding opportunity, what they can be, and what they can contribute," says Williams. "I also believe we have a long way to go." The Canadian-born Williams was reared and educated in an encouraging environment. The youngest of three children, she was the product of all-girl schools until she headed to college. Throughout those years, she never saw a man in charge and never had a male principal or a male teacher. "That," she says, "is an important part of my background that you won't find on my résumé." Her father, an executive with a nationwide chain of retail stores based in Montreal, and her mother, a homemaker very active in the community, instilled in the Ryan children a belief that the world was full of opportunity. Her brother, Fred, has worked in the investment business most of his life and lives in Toronto. Her sister, Janice, has been affiliated with the State University College at Plattsburgh for more than 25 years. Only recently retired, Janice has been involved with federal programs set up to serve students who meet certain financial qualifications, or are first-generation college-goers, or who may need academic support in order to be successful. She has also taught at the college on a part-time basis. I grew up in a family that believed in the equality of the sexes," says Williams. "The message I got from the time I was little was, 'Well, what do you want to do? Go for it.'" Today Williams is active in women's organizations in an effort to give young women the best message possible, to convince them not to allow gender to interfere with aspiration. "Women who are in a position like mine need to take opportunities to share their stories and encourage others without saying that everyone needs to be a president, because that is also the wrong message," she says. "To me the message is, 'What is it you'd like to do, what are your talents, how can you get there, and how can you live that life?' I know that this is not the message a lot of women my age had, and really not the message many girls are getting even now. I was lucky-I excelled in math and science, but nobody ever told me I wasn't supposed to." It seems clear, though, that Williams would have succeeded no matter what advice she had been given. Throughout her life, it has been she who plotted the course. Indeed, one of her earliest decisions ran counter to the norm in her hometown, Montreal: she left to study at St. Michael's College of the University of Toronto. "That was seen as heresy at the time," Williams recalls. "The custom in big Canadian cities was to go to school where you live. Ninety-five percent of my class was going to McGill, but I wanted to go away. Toronto was a great place to be, a great place to go to school, even though it was seen as a 'cow town' at the time." |
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There
are any number of explanations for her success, but Peggy Ryan Williams
will rate none of them higher than this: she has achieved because nobody
ever told her she couldn't.