Access to Excellence Podcast

A podcast All Together Different

Join George Mason University President Gregory Washington as he invites experts, change-makers, innovators, and thought leaders to engage in meaningful conversations about the greatest challenges of our time.

Listen and learn from audacious people from Mason and beyond who represent the diversity of insight, the agility of collaboration, and the tenacity required in the struggle for a better future that is at the essence of the Mason Nation.  

President Gregory Washington hosts each episode of the Access to Excellence podcast, recorded on the campus of George Mason University.

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Latest Episode

Catherine Read, mayor of Fairfax City, Va.: outspoken, unfiltered (Episode 57)

Catherine Read is the first woman and first Mason alum to be mayor of Fairfax City, Va.

Catherine Read is the first woman and first Mason alum (BA government and politics '84) to be mayor of Fairfax City, Va., the university's hometown, and she is not shy about touting a place she says helped teach her think critically. Want to know why it's good to "disrupt the system," why it's important to get women into policy-making decisions, why our educational system doesn't reward bold ideas? Read tells you. She adds: "If we can't maintain democracy, if we can't preserve our rule of law, then all of these other things make zero difference." Listen now.

"As I started out doing nonprofit advocacy work, I became aware that we did not have enough women around the table for good public policy. A lot of the problems and the issues that exist are because women are not in a position to create policies around, such as, universal pre-K or affordable quality childcare or paid family leave. And you have to ask yourself, why? And it's because women have not been at the table." 

Catherine Read
Access to Excellence, Episode 57

Catherine Read is the first Mason alum and first woman to be mayor of Fairfax City, Va.
Meet our guest
Meet our guest

Catherine Read graduated from Mason in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in government and politics, and is the first Mason alum to be mayor of Fairfax City, Va.


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