M

AAUW Scottsdale November Meeting

WHEN: 10:00 a.m., Saturday, November 15, 2025

WHERE: Scottsdale Community College, Turquoise Room

Directions: Drive East on Chaparral. Take the 1st entrance to SCC. Take immediate left. Follow it around to Parking Lot A. When you turn right into Parking Lot A, the Turquoise Room will be straight ahead. 

WHO:  Jody Liggett

WHAT: Women and Their Rights

Jodi Liggett is the founder of the Arizona Center for Women's Advancement (ACWA) and a prominent advocate for women's rights in Arizona. A native Arizonan with a law degree from Arizona State University she is a public policy expert who has worked across the political spectrum.

We will have breakfast breads and coffee. If you wish to bring a beverage, please bring it in a covered container.

Interested in a post-meeting lunch with other members? Judy Hubbard graciously offers to make a reservation for us to meet at Wally’s post meeting. Please see her to sign up!

Message From The Board...

Our October speaker was Solange Whitehead, a Scottsdale Councilwoman, who is serving her second 4-year term. She focuses on community priorities to protect the environment, public health, and quality of life for all residents. She discussed the status of those efforts and provided insight into the issues affecting priorities. The Q & A portion of her talk was especially interesting as she addressed specific items, such as water, traffic, and building expansion. Several of our new members were welcomed, notably Abby Jones and Susan Strehlow.

Jodi Liggett will be our speaker November 15th and her topic is Women and Their Rights. She’s very active in local and state politics, which offers her a unique insight. We will be meeting as usual in the Turquoise Room at Scottsdale Community College.

Our Holiday Luncheon will be held December 13th at the McCormick Ranch Golf Club at 7505 E McCormick Parkway, Scottsdale. The popular jewelry and scarf sale will be returning and, this year, gently used handbags will be offered. Joyce Yarbrough and her associates (Renae Bates, Claudia Carman, Marcia Gonzales, and Esther Groves) are accepting donations. Notably there will be a 50-50 raffle, a wine pull, and a few gift baskets. Earlier chairs Gail Stempil and Judy Hubbard are a hard act to follow. We hope these changes will continue to foster camaraderie while raising much needed funds for our local scholarships. Our immediate request is for donations of wine or funds to purchase wine. Please reach out to Sue Jaros at sue.jaros@gmail.com or Jacqui Sasser at jacqui.az55@gmail.com.

We look forward to continue supporting the purpose of AAUW: Advancing gender equity for women and girls through research, education, and advocacy. Your participation in our programs and fund-raising efforts is appreciated. If you have any suggestions, concerns, or questions, your board members are interested in hearing from you.

--Jacqui Sasser, Program Coordinator

October speaker Solange Whitehead:

Branch mermbers and No Kings partiicpants Susan Strehlow, Janet Larkin and Laraine Rodgers:

MEMBERSHIP MATTERS:

Hello from your Membership team, Judy Hubbard and Gail Stempil!

If you have any friends, neighbors, or relatives who might be interested in joining Scottsdale AAUW, please encourage them to attend our next meeting on Saturday, November 15 (with wonderful speaker, Jodi Liggett) and/or the exciting Holiday Brunch on Saturday, December 13. See articles in this newsletter for more detailed information about both events.

We are trying to keep a very up-to-date Data Base of our members, so if you have any changes—name, address, phone, email—please let us know as soon as possible. Contact both Gail at stemgw@aol.com for the Data Base and Linda Nance at lnance818@gmail.com for next year’s directory. We will make any necessary changes in the national AAUW.org roster.

We always welcome potential new members! The newest membership application form is available on our website. Just Google AAUW Scottsdale and our website will come up. (The actual address is http://scottsdale-az.aauw.net.)

Judy Hubbard and Gail Stempil, Co-Membership VPs

************************

New Member Info to add to your directory. Welcome Abby...

Abigail "Abby" Jones, 4108 E. Rancho Tierra Drive, Cave Creek, AZ 85331

abigail.lee.jones@gmail.com   303-249-3458

Colorado College, Univ. of AZ College of Law

Meet a Member...Janice Beckerleg

I have traveled the world, from my childhood as a Navy brat through my education and through my military career. When I was a child my family lived on an island in San Francisco Bay, then moved to Florida, California and then to Okemah, Oklahoma. My education ranged from Oklahoma State University to Izmir, Turkey, to Cambridge University and then classes at Phoenix College.

My military education ranged from Officers Training School where I was commissioned as Second Lieutenant, Air Command,and Staff School and then on to Air War School where I was preparing to be a senior officer.

My time in the military started with training in San Antonio, Texas and in Colorado. After I served for 2½ years in Turkey as the Accounting and Finance Officer, I was back in Colorado for training in Air Force purchasing; then it was on to Wichita, Kansas where I was Deputy Purchasing Agent and then, moving again, to Massachusetts, where I was working with contracts from $10 million to $168 million.

It was at this point that I left active-duty AF and joined the AF Reserves, serving most of my time in Texas, with a call-up to the Pentagon during Desert Storm. I then moved to Phoenix where I was employed by Goodyear Aerospace Loral Defense Systems and Lockheed-Martin. I have been in Phoenix for 40 years with a 2-year trip following my husband to RAF Lakenheath.

--Janice Beckerleg

Programs...

For your planning purposes, our Scottsdale Branch 2026 speakers and topics will be:

January 17 Adero Allison, Ph.D. Inclusivity in Higher Education

February 21 Julie Cienowski Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs)

March 26 Monica Brown Author’s Luncheon

Monica Brown will be our Author’s Luncheon speaker. Monica is the award-winning author of over thirty magical multicultural picture books for children. Her books are inspired by her Peruvian and Jewish heritage and the desire to bring diverse stories to children. Monica’s books have been featured in The New York Times and The Washington Post and on NPR’s All Things Considered. She is the recipient of two Américas Awards and a Christopher Award for books. Her books have been published in a dozen languages and she has been a featured author at The National Book

Festival, The Texas Book festival, The Brooklyn Book Festival, and The Tucson Book Festival, and internationally. The luncheon will be held on Thursday, March 26th, at the Indigenous Cultural Center (ICC), in room 222. The luncheon will be catered, and additional information will be provided later.

April 18 Open

--Jacqui Sasser, Program Coordinator

Public Policy/Community Action Committee Meeting

Please join us for our next PP/CA meeting:



November 11, 2025 at 1:00 p.m.

We will meet at Janet Larkin’s home: 7409 E. Bonita Drive, Scottsdale, AZ

We will share what we learned from the Fall Forum, which will have taken

place on November 1, 2025.

Disabled Women’s Equal Pay Day, October 23rd will have passed.

Native Women’s Equal Pay Day is coming up on November 18th.

The State Public Policy meeting will have taken place and I will share

updates.



Come join us!

Please let Janet know you are coming.....

jalarkin@cox.net

cell: 480-242-3089

National AAUW and Scottsdale Branch join October No KIngs Day....

Above: Janet Larkin in Scottsdale

Below: Susan Strehlow in Scottsdale

Above: Nadine Schwartz and NAU granddaughter in Flagstaff

Below: Laraine Rodgers in Scottsdale

SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP News.....

Story Teller’s Corner:

We got a great start in October, but, if you were unable to join us then, we would still love to have you be with us in the coming months.

Due to Thanksgiving, our writing group will meet on November 18th at 1:00 p.m.

Place: Janet Larkin’s home, 7409 E. Bonita Drive, Scottsdale.

Since December’s meeting interferes with Christmas, we’ll meet December

16th. Mark your calendar and I will remind you again in the December newsletter.

Come join the fun.

If you have any questions, please contact me. And let me know you will be attending:

--Janet Larkin

Jalarkin@cox.net

Cell: 480-242-3089

Books Etc.

Are you a history buff? Then you will LOVE our next book, Finding Margaret Fuller by Allison Pataki. The discussion will be led by Laraine Rodgers. We will be discussing this fascinating historical fiction on November 19 at my house, 3237 E. Desert Cove, Phoenix, at 1:00 PM.  A short summary follows:

Young, brazen, beautiful, and unapologetically brilliant, Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated Sage of Concord, to meet his coterie of enlightened friends. There she becomes "the radiant genius and fiery heart" of the Transcendentalists, a role model to a young Louisa May Alcott, an inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hester Prynne and the scandalous Scarlet Letter, a friend to Henry David Thoreau as he ventures out to Walden Pond ... and a muse to Emerson. But Margaret craves more than poetry and interpersonal drama, and her restless soul needs new challenges and adventures.

And so she charts a singular course against a backdrop of dizzying historical drama: From Boston, where she hosts a salon for students like Elizabeth Cady Stanton; to the editorial meetings of The Dial magazine, where she hones her pen as its co-founder; to Harvard's library, where she is the first woman permitted entry; to the gritty New York streets where she spars with Edgar Allan Poe and reports on Frederick Douglass. Margaret defies conventions time and again as an activist for women and an advocate for humanity, earning admirers and critics alike.

Please let me know by November 16 if you will be coming as I need to know if I should build another wing on my house! Don’t miss out on this book that EVERYONE knows SOMETHING about!

--Cynthia Peplinski cynthiadysart@cox.net

Lunch Bunch for 2025

Well, lovely ladies, many of you have been asking for it and know of its deliciousness, so the November 6 at 12:00 p.m. pick for Lunch Bunch is Wildflower on Indian Bend and Scottsdale Rd. I tend to always get the same item but, looking more closely at the menu, I think I may have been a “persnickety old lady” in choosing the same item over and over! 

 You might want to partake in the “tastes of the season”, a turkey cranberry walnut stuffing sandwich (all-natural turkey breast, bacon, cranberry walnut stuffing, cranberry sauce, herb mayo on stuffing bread & served with mixed chips). However, as luscious as all the sandwiches sound, you could go with my very favorite, the almond tuna (albacore tuna, smokehouse almonds, apple, celery, scallions & mayo with dill pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, pea shoots, grain mustard on nine grain & served with mixed chips). I usually bring half of it home!

Or if you feel the nutritional need to have some greens at lunch, then you could order my best friend’s favorite, the strawberry spinach salad (spinach, bacon, blue cheese, strawberries, organic dried sweet corn, basil, toasted walnuts & all-natural chipotle poppyseed dressing served with artisan bread). Or splurge and order a sandwich and split a salad with a friend, citrus beet (organic field greens, roasted baby beets, orange segments, cucumbers, red onions, goat cheese, toasted walnuts, citrus hot-honey & all-natural cilantro lime vinaigrette served with artisan bread ) or southwest superfood (spinach, organic quinoa, slow-roasted tomatoes, avocado, black beans, roasted red bell peppers, cilantro, organic dried sweet corn, goat cheese, toasted pepitas & all-natural cilantro lime vinaigrette served with artisan bread).

And no matter what you order, you will come away happy, contented and ready for a nap! We will be visiting Wildflower on Thursday, November 6 at 12:00 PM. Please RSVP to me by November 3. This is one not to miss!    



-Cynthia Peplinski cynthiadysart@cox.net

Shopping at Fry's Can Help an SCC Student...

Scottsdale Branch has, over the years, been part of Frys Reward Program--whereby, if you are enrolled, a percentage of your purchase goes to our scholarship fund at Scottsdale Community College's Maricopa Community College Fund, which will then benefit a returning student. Here's how you can enroll:

1. Go to frysfood.com
2. click on Community
3. click on community rewards
4. click on Enroll Now
5. sign on with your email and password
6. enter with organization number XV773 (Maricopa Community College Fund)
7. click Enroll
8. enter your 12 digit Frys account number (which you will have had to obtain first)
9. MCCF will pop up

HOW TO ORDER AN AAUW NAME BADGE

Go to AAUW.org and in the upper right hand corner, log in with your email and password. 

You'll need to create an account if you don't have one.



Click on Membership in the top right hand corner.

Go to Discounts and Perks on the right side of the screen.

Scroll down to Shop AAUW, about halfway down, and click on it.

Click on Accessorize.

You'll see Custom Name Badge and click on it.

Decide between pin or magnet back. 

Customize to order.

$11.50 w/pin   $15.00 w/magnet

And place your order!

NEWS FROM NATIONAL....

Press Release from AAUW

October 16, 2025

AAUW Opposes Trump’s Higher-Ed Compact — Stand with Students, Not Political Litmus Tests

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump Administration has invited all U.S. colleges and universities to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which would offer preferential federal funding if institutions adopt sweeping policy changes. These changes include dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion, restricting campus governance and speech, holding tuition flat for five years, and capping international student enrollment (no more than 15% of undergraduates overall and no more than 5% from any single country). MIT and Brown University have already rejected the compact, and higher-education leaders warn it threatens academic freedom and institutional independence. 

Gloria L. Blackwell, CEO of AAUW (the American Association of University Women) responds to this threat on higher education:  

“This compact is a political litmus test — dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion, muzzle campuses, and cap international enrollment. AAUW says no. Conditioning federal funds on abandoning these values, restricting campus speech, overriding institutional governance, and even limiting how many international students a campus may enroll is coercive, discriminatory, and inconsistent with the core purposes of higher education.

America’s colleges should never be forced to choose between their values and their viability. We urge every institution to refuse this political litmus test and stand with students — especially women, students of color, student-parents, international scholars, and LGBTQ+ students, — whose success depends on campuses that are inclusive, evidence-driven, and free to teach and learn.”

Time to sign up for the Two Minute Activist:

Send emails and texts to your legislators to fight for equal pay, family leave, stopping sexual harassment, equality in education and more. Sign up to get regular alerts to be able to take timely action.

To sign up, (click here).

Be an AAUW Activist. SIGN UP NOW