While Fortune releases their Most Powerful Women at their annual DC conference, Washingtonian magazine announced their 2021 Most Powerful Women list, over 150 strong, which includes categories from industry and government to the arts. 

New to the list are FTC Chair Lina Khan, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Sally Buzbee, Executive Editor of the Washington Post, and Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Washingtonian brought back many DC stalwarts including Heather Podesta of Invariant, Juleanna Glover from Ridgely Walsh, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Tammy Haddad, CEO of Haddad Media and co-founder of WHCInsider.

To view the full list, click here.

Big news in Washington as longtime political reporter, editor, and DC bureau chief Julie Pace gets the tap on the shoulder to become the new Executive Editor of the Associated Press. The New York Times reports that she began her career with the hope of becoming an international reporter.

Pace is a regular guest on Fox News Sunday and other top political shows.

She replaces Sally Buzbee who was named Executive Editor of the Washington Post in May.

 

Uber hosted hundreds of staffers and stakeholders ahead of the Congressional Baseball Game at Sandlot Southeast, a 5,000 square foot, outdoor container bar & event space located directly across the street from the players entrance of Nationals Park Stadium at the base of the newly completed Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge.

 

The event highlighted Uber Eats’ unique partnership with Sandlot Southeast, as well as their contributions to supporting local and minority-owned restaurants throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, including supporting over 200,000 free rides to and from vaccination sites through its partnership with the White House.

 

The event featured catering from Grub Rockstar (est. 2016), a Black-owned food and catering company led by head chef and local D.C. resident Henry Tucker. Grub Rockstar is set up in the Sandlot Southeast space and is serving throughout the month of October. Be sure to check them out.

 

 

Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman, co-founders of PunchbowlDC News hosted an evening reception featuring an interview with Clear CEO Caryn Seidman Becker, at Anchovy Social. Palmer announced that PunchbowlDC now has 100,000 subscribers. It was one of the first gatherings of politicos and media this summer.

Guests included Danielle Burr and CR Wooters, former Trump White House aide Johnny DeStefano, Ron Bonjean, Ben and Joanne Ginsberg, Betsy Fischer Martin, Mike Allen and Jill Zuckman. The co-author of the bestseller, “Nightmare Scenario,” Damian Paletta and Jacqueline Alemany, author of the Power Up newsletter were among the media stars along with Brian Stelter and Mike Allen.

NBC News’ White House Correspondent Kelly O’Donnell has been named President of the White House Correspondents’ Association for the 2023-’24 term after a tie breaking vote.

On Monday, the WHCA released results for their annual election to decide three new members for the association’s nine person executive board, only to discover a tie between O’Donnell and the Politico White House Correspondent Anita Kumar for the At-Large executive board seat. Even more surprising, O’Donnell and Kumar were both top choices for the associations’ next presidential term, also on the ballot this year, with O’Donnell winning 204 to Kumar’s 191 votes.

However, according to the WHCA’s bylaws, only a sitting board member can be elected President. As a result, the decision on the next WHCA President of the 2023-’24 term became contingent on a tie-breaking vote by the outgoing executive board. Late Wednesday night, the board made their decision, voting 7 to 2 in O’Donnell’s favor, reports AdWeek.

The current WHCA President, Associated Press White House Correspondent Zeke Miller, will finish his term at the end of this year. CBS News Radio White House correspondent Steven Portnoy will take up the seat for the 2021-’22 term, followed by NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith for the 2022-’23 term.

In her 27 years working for NBC News, Kelly O’Donnell has covered several presidential campaigns, the summer and winter Olympics, and several major events including the Oklahoma City bombings and the O.J. Simpson trials. She was embedded in the 3rd Infantry Division during the Iraq War and was the first to report on live television Hillary Clinton’s concession call to President Trump following the 2016 elections. While at NBC she has worked as a Capitol Hill and White House correspondent, and has appeared on many NBC platforms including NBC Nightly News, Today, and Meet the Press.

Every year the White House Correspondents’ Association holds an election to pick three of their members to join the association’s nine-member executive board – each serving a term of three years. This year, the association also casted votes to see who among those nine board members would serve as the next President of the WHCA. In an unlikely turn of events, this year’s election has ended up with a tie.

According to the election results released by the WHCA, NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell narrowly edged out Politico’s Anita Kumar in the presidential race, winning 204 to 191 votes. However, according to the association’s bylaws, the President of the WHCA must be elected to the executive board before they can take up the presidency. This means that O’Donnell’s victory is contingent on her also winning the At-Large executive board seat – a race that she tied with Kumar with each receiving 197 votes.

The decision now rests on the outgoing executive board who will reconvene later this week to make a tie-breaking vote for both the At-Large seat and the Presidency. Many White House reporters say they cannot recall the last time that a similar situation has occurred, Politico reports.

The two other board seats up for a vote were won by large margins. ABC News’ Karen Travers won the Radio Seat with 374 votes and Bloomberg’s Justin Sink won the Wire Services Seat with 364 votes. A total of 397 ballots were submitted. The association also voted overwhelmingly to amend their bylaws, with 333 votes in the affirmative.

The White House is partnering with ride-sharing companies Uber Technologies and Lyft to offer free rides to and from vaccination sites through July 4th, according to an exclusive Wall Street Journal report. The details are to be announced in a Tuesday call with governors as the Biden administration gears up to vaccinate 70% of the U.S. adult population before Independence Day.

“To ensure that transportation is less of a barrier,” said President Joe Biden during a virtual meeting with governors Tuesday, “from May 24th to July 4th, Uber and Lyft are both going to offer everyone free rides to and from vaccination sites.” He added, “I think that is really stepping up.”

Uber and Lyft have previously offered some free and discounted rides to vaccination sites, but this new partnership will expand those services to anyone in the United States. The companies are set to receive data on about 80,000 vaccination sites from the Biden administration and will begin promoting free vaccination rides on May 24th. A new feature will be introduced on their apps that will allow users to “simply select a vaccination site near them, follow simple directions to redeem their ride, and then get a ride to take them to and from a nearby vaccination site free of charge,” reports Axios.

This latest push is part of the Biden Administration’s effort to get enough Americans vaccinated for safer gatherings in time for July 4th. According to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker, only 34.8% of Americans are fully vaccinated as of May 10th. The current rate of vaccinations is a little over 2.1 million doses a day, putting the United States on target to hit 75% of the population in 3 months. In mid-April, the vaccination effort reached a peak of about 3.38 million doses per day.

The Biden administration is hoping that by shifting their allocation methods towards state and local governments and private companies, they will be able to incentivise new audiences to get vaccinated. White House COVID-19 Coordinator Jeffrey Zients points out that “not everyone has had the chance to get vaccinated yet.” 

“That’s why,” he explains, “we are using all of the tools at our disposal and enlisting partners across sectors to meet the president’s goal of getting 70% of adult Americans with at least one shot by July 4th.”

Uber and Lyft will not be paid by the federal government in order to provide the free rides. Instead, the companies are hoping the program will bring new users back to their services after the pandemic put pressure on their ride-sharing services. 

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that this latest partnership will help expand on the company’s global commitments to facilitating access to COVID-19 vaccines. “Vaccines are our best hope to beat this pandemic, and soon everyone in America will be able to take a free Uber to get their shot. We are honored to deepen our previous global commitments, and partner with the White House and Lyft to provide free rides to vaccination sites across the US. This is a proud moment for me, for Uber, and for our country,” Mr. Khosrowshahi said. Uber also partnered previously with Moderna to help provide vaccine-safety information.

“Helping more Americans get vaccinated helps the Lyft community of drivers and riders, and we’re grateful to the Biden administration for prioritizing access,” said John Zimmer, the co-founder and president of Lyft.

As partisan politics continue to slow down key legislation in Congress, the founder and head of ENGAGE, Rachel Pearson, has proposed a clever solution: keep the focus on women’s economic security.

ENGAGE is a bipartisan women’s organization that hopes to clue in politicos and policy wonks on the commonly overlooked fact that issues of economic security are, by and large, women’s issues. In a recent op-ed published by The Hill, Pearson lays out her case for why appealing to women on these matters might just bring about the unity that this country has been longing for.

“Women outnumber, outvote, and outlive men,” Pearson points out. “The well-being of American women is, to a significant extent, the well-being of America. Secure their economic prospects and you will have gone a long way in securing the prospects of our many diverse communities.”

Pearson explains three key issues that have stalled in Congress and that women ought to have an outsized interest in:  paid family leave, internet connectivity for all, and retirement security. 

With 7 out of 10 family caregivers being women, Pearson makes the obvious case for why women should care about paid family leave: “How is a working mother who makes less than $75,000 a year on average — and many earn much less — supposed to manage her life and take care of a child with special needs, a father with Alzheimer’s, or a mother who needs to be driven to chemotherapy?”

However, things like internet connectivity and retirement security are also significant issues that impact women disproportionately. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the impact of digital access, or lack thereof, on productivity and success, especially among school age children. Yet, according to Connect the Future, 31 million Americans still lack access to computer technology.

“These millions of Americans have been economically and socially trapped by a lack of technology,” writes Pearson. “Besides education, the absence of access impacts health care and economic security — think of telehealth and entrepreneurs whose small-businesses depend on connectivity,” she adds.

Meanwhile, these inequities tend to build up after a lifetime. With women living longer lives with less earnings, paired with various disparate impacts, women are finding themselves heading towards a retirement cliff.

“All these disadvantages make saving for retirement a daunting challenge for American women,” Pearson explains. “We must immediately grapple with how to support generations of destitute retirees.”

Pearson calls on the Biden administration to take up these issues given the widespread effects it would have, not just for women, but for all demographics. 

“In advancing women’s economic security, you will, by extension, be lifting up our fathers, our brothers, our husbands, and our sons. Women need the Biden administration and Congress to compromise and find the path forward.”

Rachel Pearson founded ENGAGE: Promoting Women’s Economic Security in the wake of the 2018 election. ENGAGE is a bipartisan organization focused on expanding economic opportunity for all American women in the 21st century. Find out more about ENGAGE here.

Washington, D.C. — Uber Technologies, Inc., has teamed up with PayPal and Walgreens to launch an $11 million Vaccine Access Fund, which will provide free rides to COVID-19 vaccination sites in the United States for communities hit hard by COVID-19, as reported by Reuters.

The creation of the fund was announced in a letter to the White House from the CEOs of Uber, PayPal, Walgreens, and the U.S. non-profit Local Initiatives Support Corporation, which is managing the Vaccine Access Fund.

Uber’s support of the Vaccine Access Fund comes in addition to their international commitment to give 10 million free or discounted rides to vaccination sites around the world.

In addition to the federal government’s efforts to combat the pandemic, creative initiatives driven by the private sector, like the Vaccine Access Fund, will help bring us one step closer to returning to normalcy. 

To contribute to the Vaccine Access Fund, donations are accepted here via PayPal or via the donate button found directly in the Uber app.