Five San Antonio women attend Yale Law University seminar

Aida Rojas, Diane Arevalo, Dinorah Diaz, Rosie Gonzalez, and Olga Kauffman, all from San Antonio, at the the Women's Campaign School at Yale University Law School.

San Antonio women attend Yale Campaign School

July 14th, 68 women from across the country and around the world converged at the Women's Campaign School at Yale University's Law School in New Haven, Connecticut. Women came from as far as the Sudan, Bosnia, Mexico, Afghanistan, and Slovakia.

The group also included women from San Antonio. The Women's Campaign School is a nonpartisan, non-advocacy, political campaign training program. Their mission is "to provide the very best training in the world for women who want to run for office or who want to move up to higher elective office. We train women to run political campaigns, and to advance their careers in public life in political environments.

"We train women leaders who are capable of building relationships regardless of political point of view." San Antonio was fortunate to be well represented by four phenomenal women as students and another amazing woman who sits on the school's board of directors.

Aida Rojas & Dinorah Diaz are two well-established and respected attorneys who are solo practitioners with practices that encompass civil litigation, family law, criminal defense, and an array of other practices of law. Both Rojas and Diaz are candidates for judge of local district courts. Diane Arevalo comes from a long line of community activists and politicos with a history of service to San Antonio.

Diane is currently employed at Ticketmaster and assists in planning local political campaigns and fundraisers.

Olga Kauffman is a San Antonio fundraising consultant with a demonstrated commitment to the women and children of our great city. The four San Antonio women who attended and participated in the Women's Campaign School were recruited by and encouraged to apply to the program by Rosie Gonzalez, an alumnus of the campaign school (Class of 2007) who now sits on the Board of Directors as their legal counsel.

Gonzalez is a local attorney with a Family Law practice that focuses on child abuse litigation, and consults with local women candidates about how to run successful political campaigns for public office.

The women participated in an exhausting and grueling five-day curriculum that began each day at 8:15 a.m. and ended about 8 p.m. The participants were exposed to an array of tremendous women speakers who schooled them on a number of subjects and skills necessary to run a successful campaign for public office.

Topics discussed included how to write campaign speeches, developing image, how to make the decision to run, video presence consulting, polling, developing image and messaging, communicating via paid media, maneuvering through social media sites, web site development, GOTV strategies, fundraising, campaign budgeting and more.

"Rest assured that our ladies left Yale feeling like they are poised to run for city council, judge, state rep., Governor, Congress even President of the United States!" says Gonzalez.The Women's Campaign School takes place every year in July and is always seeking qualified, motivated and ambitious women to carry the torch to political victories. Interested women are encouraged to apply for consideration. Visit http://www.wcsyale.org/ for more information. Applications are taken starting in February each year.

For a personal presentation about the program and what it has to offer, contact Rosie Gonzalez at 210-224-1283. Story & photo by QSanAntonioNews.com