Libby Seguin and Lauren Stott are both graduate students leading the nation's first comprehensive look at the gender, age, race and veteran status of all executive positions in state and local office.
It's nearly impossible to find out exactly how diverse local public leadership is. But along with the nonprofit Engaging Local Government Leaders (ELGL), Sequin and Stott are trying to fix that.
And apparently, this is something a lot of people care about. ELGL didn't have the money for the project, so it created a Kickstarter campaign, and with the help of donations, it raised more than $26,000.
In this episode of "The 23%: Conversations With Women in Government," Seguin and Stott discuss why data like this is needed and how they hope it will bring about change.
"Most local governments are run by white men," Seguin says, "so there hasn’t needed to be a conversation about what diversity looks like."
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