Chancellor Gallo to discuss leadership challenges facing women

Gallo one of three speaking as part of UWRF Women’s History Month

March 8, 2023 - Any way you look at it, Maria Gallo has found professional success, making her way from a child in a middle-class family to the head of two universities. 

But Gallo, who began her tenure as the University of Wisconsin-River Falls chancellor in the summer of 2021 after a five-year term as president of Delaware Valley University, said ascending to those positions was anything but easy. Climbing the job ladder is often a challenge, she said, and was more difficult for one simple reason: Gallo is a woman. 

She was the first woman president at Delaware Valley University and is the second woman chancellor at UW-River Falls (Ann Lydecker was the first, and Connie Foster has been interim chancellor twice).  

“The road to a university presidency is not a simple straight line, especially for women,” Gallo said. “Although women are getting the majority of degrees, they are not ascending into leadership roles at the same rate (as men).”

Gallo will discuss her professional journey and the challenges of being a woman in the work world as part of a series of speakers in conjunction with UWRF’s Women’s History Month. She is scheduled to speak on Wednesday, March 22. Other speakers include Dana Thompson, a trans woman who is a special education supervisor in the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage (Minn.) School District, on Wednesday, March 8, and Dr. Morgan Barnum, a Hudson physician, on Wednesday, March 29. 

All three speeches are at noon on their respective dates in the Falcon’s Nest in the University Center on campus and are free and open to the public.

The speeches are co-sponsored by the UWRF Diversity, Belonging and Inclusion and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies departments and are intended to highlight women’s contributions to society as well as the ongoing fight for equality.
  
For more information, email inclusion@uwrf.edu.