Olympia Snowe

The Lugar Lecture Series welcomes Olympia Snowe, the former U.S. senator from Maine who dedicated her 18-year career to bipartisan progress. Her lecture is titled “From Challenge to Opportunity: Overcoming Obstacles in Life, and in Washington.”

In 1989, after Snowe married the governor of Maine, she served concurrently as the state’s first lady and the U.S. representative from Maine’s second district. As a Republican, she served Maine as a congresswoman from 1979 until 1995, when she was elected as a U.S. senator. Throughout her political career, she was known as one of the Republican party’s most moderate members. Snowe now serves as co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on Political Reform where she has collaborated with other former politicians, including Tom Daschle, the former Democrat senator from South Dakota.