Meet Claudette Williams, an Army vet who served for 30 years before entering politics. As a single mother of three, Claudette was called to active duty after 9/11 and was deployed for more than a year. With the help of family and friends, she was able to find the necessary care for her kids, but she sacrificed some of the most formative years of their childhood in order to serve the nation in uniform. After retiring from the military in 2014, she felt called to continue to serve through politics, first on the borough council of her town in northeast Pennsylvania, and then in the 2020 cycle she ran to represent district 176 in the Pennsylvania state legislature. She lost, but ran a powerful campaign and learned a lot along the way.
In this episode, Claudette talks about where her commitment to service comes from and what she learned from her time in the military. She also discusses what it was like to run as woman of color in suburban and rural Pennsylvania during the tumultuous year of 2020.
