Obama urges nation to demand a ‘common sense’ balance on gun control, gun rights

Video: President Barack Obama spoke at a Navy Yard memorial service in Washington, D.C.

By Brigid Schulte and Paul Duggan, Published: September 23

President Obama, addressing yet another memorial gathering after a deadly mass shooting, said Sunday evening that he senses “a creeping resignation” in the United States that homicidal lunacy like the Washington Navy Yard massacre “is somehow the new normal.” But he said “it ought to be a shock to us all” and should spur Americans to demand “a common sense” balance between gun rights and gun control.
“We cannot accept this,” Obama said of the Sept. 16 attack that killed a dozen people at the Navy Yard. “As Americans bound in grief and love, we must insist here today there’s nothing normal about innocent men and women being gunned down where they work.”

Obama was addressing about 4,000 people, including loved ones of the slain, who gathered outdoors at the Marine Corps Barracks at Eighth and I streets SE, a few blocks from the Navy Yard. The president did not vow to throw the weight of his presidency behind an effort to enact gun-control legislation, as he did in December at a memorial service after the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Instead, he urged the nation to demand such measures.
“By now . . . it should be clear that the change we need will not come from Washington, even when tragedy strikes Washington,” he said at Sunday’s service on the barracks parade grounds. “Change will come the only way it ever has come, and that’s from the American people.”
The Navy Yard gunman, 34-year-old Aaron Alexis, a former Navy reservist with a recent history of mental problems, opened fire in Building 197, first with a shotgun, then with a pistol, killing nine men and three women. All the victims worked in the building, which houses the Naval Sea Systems Command.
“Part of what wears on . . . is the sense that this has happened before,” the president said. “What wears on us, what troubles us so deeply, as we gather here today is this senseless violence that took place in the Navy Yard echoes other recent tragedies.”
And he intoned the names of the places he has visited as president in the wake of mass homicides: Fort Hood, Tex.; Tucson; Aurora, Colo., and Newtown. “Once more our hearts are broken,” he said. “Once more we ask why.”
Joined on stage by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and other dignitaries, Obama shared personal details about each of the Navy Yard victims, saying: “These are not statistics. They are the lives that have been taken from us. This is how a single act of violence can ripple.
“A husband lost his wife. Wives have lost their husbands. Sons and daughters have lost their moms and their dads. Little children have lost their grandparents. Hundreds in our communities have lost a neighbor. And thousands here have lost a friend.”
Echoing Obama, Gray told the gathering that “our country is drowning in a sea of guns. . . . Senseless violence like this is an all-too-everyday fact of life here in the District and in our nation’s other big cities. It is a fact of life that we must stop accepting.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obama-promises-push-for-common-sense-gun-laws/2013/09/22/789f8ba6-23ad-11e3-ad0d-b7c8d2a594b9_story.html

Through Hot Mommas Project, one woman sets out to boost the confidence of all women

Bill O'Leary/Washington Post - Kathy Korman-Frey, front, makes a face for a snapshot as she watches the Hot Mommas Project awards with, from left, Sonia Ledwith, Suki Howard, Rachel Eberhard, Francisca Alonso, Korman-Frey, Ify Ofulue and Christianna Pyo.

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By Brigid Schulte, Published: November 3

As the guests filed into Kathy Korman Frey’s Palisades home in the District on Saturday afternoon for the first Hot Mommas Project “Super Bowl of Mentors” global watch party, she handed each a blue notecard and asked them to rate — on a scale of 1 to 10 — how confident they were feeling.
They had come to hear stories about women around the world who, much like themselves, are striving to meet career goals and live full lives outside work. Frey, a George Washington University business professor and Harvard MBA, had gathered the case studies as part of the Hot Mommas Project.
Similar parties in at least 20 other countries — the biggest and most elegant held in Kuwait — watching as Frey announced the project’s 2012-13 winners in a webcast.
Frey calls them “holistic leaders” at work and home. In other words, “Hot Mommas.” And she hopes learning about the winners will inspire other women.
“Our view is, if you can’t see it, you can’t be it,” Frey said. “Seeing real role models sends women and girls the signal, ‘Oh, I could do this,’ rather than getting discouraged by the usual wall of 6-foot-2 men in blue suits.”
Reams of research studies and surveys in recent years have shown how, as early as elementary school, girls are less confident than boys in their skills and abilities. That gap only grows as girls and boys become adults.
And, Frey argues, that confidence gap is a big reason why statistics show that women tend to earn less money at every level, lag in promotions in every field, and, while female-owned businesses are among the fastest-growing sectors of the economy, they tend to be smaller and attract far less venture capital than male-owned firms.
So Frey has turned her academic research and the Hot Mommas Project into a mission aimed at reversing what she calls that “self-efficacy” gap through the power of storytelling.
She shares stories like that of Eman Al-Awadhi, one of this year’s global case-study winners. Al-Awadhi dreamed of going out on reporting assignments for the Kuwait News Agency. Instead, she was told she belonged, as did all women, behind a desk, in the office, as an editor. “One day, you’ll get married and have children,” her boss told her, even though she was and is single. “This is better for you.”
Instead, Al-Awadhi reported in her free time and routinely worked double shifts to show she could do it. In a few years, that same boss called her and asked her to race out to cover a story about the NATO secretary-general.
“I wanted to share my story to tell other women that we need to find out what we’re good at, what we really want to do, and then fight to do that,” she said. “Even when it’s difficult.”
Other winners — from the United States, Nigeria, India, Croatia, Lithuania, Egypt and other countries — told of their battles to overcome alcoholism, their juggle of work and home demands.
Francisca Alonso, this year’s winner in the science, engineering, math and technology category, shared her story of starting her architecture and construction company in 2001, when her four children were all younger than 5.http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/through-hot-mommas-project-one-woman-sets-out-to-boost-the-confidence-of-all-women/2013/11/02/6bd7ee6a-43fe-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html