About the Author
Meryl Frank is president of Makeda Global Network, an international consulting firm that works with thousands of women worldwide. Over a long and varied career, she has been an activist, a mayor, an ambassador, and a champion for of women’s leadership and political participation around the world.
Frank came to public prominence in 2000 when she led a grassroots campaign against the deeply entrenched political machine in her hometown of Highland Park, New Jersey, and won election as mayor, a position she held for the next ten years. In 2009, President Obama appointed her United States Representative and, subsequently, Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. As a result of her work on behalf of women globally, she was named one of the 50 Most Influential Jews in the World by the Jerusalem Post.
In May of 2022, President Biden appointed Frank to a seat on the US Holocaust Memorial Council. She is also a member the Board of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Frank has served on the boards of the American Jewish Congress, Jewish Women International, Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, and Warmheart Worldwide. She has also served in leadership roles with the Democratic National Committee’s National Women’s Leadership Forum, and on the National Finance Committees for several presidential candidates. She is the co-editor of The Parental Leave Crisis – Toward a National Policy and as Director of the Infant Care Leave Project at the Yale Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy, she was instrumental in the development and passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
She is a graduate of Livingston College, Rutgers University and of Yale University, where she earned graduate degrees in public health, political science, and international relations. She lives in Highland Park, New Jersey.
