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Lecture on Congress at the Library of Congress

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Meet our Keynote

The Honorable Olympia J. Snowe

Photo: Olympia Snowe

Olympia J. Snowe was born Olympia Jean Bouchles on February 21, 1947, in Augusta, Maine. She is the daughter of the late George Bouchles, a native of Mytilene, Greece, and the late Georgia Goranites Bouchles, whose parents immigrated to America from Sparta. After the death of her parents, she was raised by her aunt and uncle, the late Mary and James Goranites of Auburn, Maine. Olympia attended St. Basil’s Academy, a Greek Orthodox school in Garrison, New York, and graduated from Edward Little High School in Auburn. She earned a degree in political science from the University of Maine in 1969.

With her election in 1994, Olympia became only the second woman Senator in history to represent Maine, following the late Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, who served from 1949 – 1973. In November 2006, she was re-elected to a third six-year term in the United States Senate with 74 percent of the vote.

Before her election to the Senate, Olympia represented Maine’s Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for sixteen years. Senator Snowe is only the fourth woman in history to be elected to both houses of Congress and the first woman in American history to serve in both houses of a state legislature and both houses of Congress. When first elected to Congress in 1978, at the age of 31, Olympia was the youngest Republican woman, and the first Greek-American woman, ever elected to Congress. She has won more federal elections in Maine than any other person since World War II.

Meet our Moderator

Cokie Roberts

Photo: Cokie Roberts

Cokie Roberts is a political commentator for ABC News, providing analysis for all network news programming. From 1996-2002 she and Sam Donaldson co-anchored the weekly ABC interview program "This Week". Roberts also contributes political analysis for National Public Radio. In her more than forty years in broadcasting, she has won countless awards, including three Emmys. She has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame, and was cited by the American Women in Radio and Television as one of the fifty greatest women in the history of broadcasting.

In addition to her appearances on the airwaves, Roberts, along with her husband, Steven V. Roberts, writes a weekly column syndicated in newspapers around the country by U Click. The Roberts are also contributing editors to USA Weekend Magazine, and together they wrote Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families, published in 2011. Their other book together, From this Day Forward, an account of their now more than forty-five year marriage and other marriages in American history immediately went onto The New York Times bestseller list. It followed Cokie Roberts's number one bestseller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, an account of women's roles and relationships throughout American history. Roberts histories of women in America's founding era--Founding Mothers, published in 2004 and Ladies of Liberty in 2008, also became instant bestsellers.

Cokie Roberts holds more than twenty honorary degrees, serves on the boards of several non-profit institutions and President Bush appointed her to his Commission on Service and Civic Participation. In 2008 the Library of Congress named her a "Living Legend," one of the very few Americans to have attained that honor. She is the mother of two and grandmother of six.

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