Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship National Advisory Committee

The National Advisory Committee of the Henry Clay Center for Statesmanship represents the highest ideals of statesmanship on the national and international stage.

The Honorable Sandra Day O'Connor - Co-Chair of the HCCS National Advisory Committee

Former Associate Justice
Supreme Court of the United States

Perhaps no other jurist has come to the U. S. Supreme Court under greater expectations. President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981 to be the first woman justice. She emerged from the shadow of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and the court's conservative bloc with her own brand of pragmatic and centrist-oriented conservatism. From her rural childhood to her career climb through a profession dominated by men, O'Connor often chose practical solutions as she worked within the system. This tendency to moderate enhanced her importance in an often-splintered Supreme Court.

Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker - Co-Chair of the HCCS National Advisory Committee

Former U.S. Senator from Kansas

Nancy Kassebaum Baker was the first woman to serve in the U. S. Senate having neither been elected to serve first in the House of Representatives nor having been appointed to fill out the remainder of a term from a husband after his death while in office. She was also the first woman to represent Kansas in the Senate. She defeated eight other Republicans in the 1978 primary election to replace retiring Republican James B. Pearson. She was re-elected to her Senate seat in 1984 and 1990, but did not seek re-election in 1996. Kassebaum, a moderate to liberal Republican, has often been noted for her health care legislation co-sponsored by Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Democrat. Since 1996 she has been married to former U.S. Senator Howard Baker, Jr., of Tennessee.