Speaker Bios

Angela Monson

Angela Zoe Monson is an Oklahoma native, beginning her life of community service as a teenager. Angela’s first public demonstration of concern for others began as a volunteer with the Oklahoma City Urban League. Focused on education, her involvement with the Urban League eventually led to her first elected office at the age of 15 as a youth member of the Black Board of Education, a community wide elected board established by the Urban League to shadow the Oklahoma City Board of Education which was all white at the time.  The actions of the Urban League and the Black Board of Education ultimately led to the election of the first African American to the Oklahoma City Public Schools Board of Education. Continuing to serve her church, school and community in many other youth leadership roles, Angela was elected Lt. Governor of Oklahoma Girls State in 1972, the first African American to hold that position.

After graduating from Douglass High School in Oklahoma City she attended the University of Oklahoma as a member of the President’s Leadership Class but later transferred to Oklahoma City University where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Corrections in 1976. Angela also holds a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Oklahoma at Norman and has been recognized by both OCU and OU as a Distinguished Alumnus.

Angela has been employed in various capacities during her professional career, including a probation and parole officer for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections; counselor at the Council for Resocialization of Ex-offenders and later as the director of the Youth Offender Program; Field Operations Supervisor for the 1980 Decennial Census; traveling city manager for six predominately African American Oklahoma towns; and fiscal analyst for the Oklahoma State Legislature.

Access to high quality health care has been both a personal and professional passion of Monson’s and in 1986 until her election to the State Legislature, she served as the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Health Care Project. Monson was charged with the development of a statewide coalition of organizations to address health care access and financing issues and through the efforts of the 100 plus member coalition, Medicaid coverage for children and women in Oklahoma was substantially expanded. The organization also worked to maintain local health care delivery systems in rural areas and to eliminate health care access limitations for many special needs populations.

After two failed state legislative campaigns, Angela was elected to the Oklahoma House of Representative from District 99 in 1990.  She served the district for 3 years and in 1993, was elected to the Oklahoma State Senate to represent District 48, serving faithfully until 2005. As a legislator, Monson was the primary author of many of the laws pertaining to health care, including Mental Health Parity, Medicaid expansion for children and pregnant women, and the bill that resulted in first responders’ capability to locate 911 calls from cellular devices.  Senator Monson served as the First Assistant Majority Floor Leader, the highest-ranking position ever held by an African American in the Oklahoma Senate. She also served as the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee and the Education Committee.

Senator Monson is a past president of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), the first African American woman to serve in that position. She also served as chair of the NCSL Health Committee and as a member of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators Executive Committee. During her tenure as the NCSL Health Committee Chair, Monson was instrumental in developing the Conference’s position and actions on the Tobacco Settlement Agreement between the states’ attorneys general and the tobacco companies, and also testified before several Congressional Committees on Medicaid and Medicare.

Monson is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Health Policy Development, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation National Advisory Committee for the Coverage Team, the Board of Directors of Families USA, the Steering Committee of the Milbank Memorial Fund Reforming States Group, and the Public Health Law Association. In 1998, Monson was appointed to the National Advisory Council to the National Health Service Corps by then Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala. She was later appointed chair of the Council.

Monson also made statewide and national impact in other areas including tax reform and foster care. She served as Co-Chair of the Streamline Sales Tax Implementing States, a recognized group of almost 40 states and the District of Columbia established to develop a simplified and uniform internet sales tax collection process, and also as a member of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, working to improve state and federal foster care and adoption systems.

In 2009, Monson was elected as Chairperson of the Oklahoma City Public Schools Board of Education, a district-wide elected position. Ironically, that was the last elective office in which Monson served. 

Monson is retired from the Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center as Associate Provost for the Office of Community Partnerships and Health Policy in August 2018. She was responsible for providing OUHSC with strong, visible leadership in the planning, development, and implementation of diversity initiatives designed to increase the representation of minorities and others who are underrepresented in health care professions. She also served as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. 

For more than five decades, Monson has worked with schools, churches and other community organizations in many roles. She is a past president of the Oklahoma City Branch of the NAACP and also served on the Oklahoma City/County Board of Health, the OU Medical Center Board of Trustees, and many other boards as chairperson and board member.

The recipient of many honors and awards, Monson was presented the first Legislative Health Champion Award by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma and other sponsoring entities. She also received the Distinguished Legislator of the Year Award from both the American Psychiatric Association and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures Association. She was named Advocate of the Year by the Families USA Foundation, and Legislator of the Year by many other national and statewide association and organizations.

Sen. Monson was recognized as the Woman of the Year in Government by the Redlands Council of Girl Scouts and was selected as a Journal Record Woman of the Year finalist in 2005.  She was among the first group of inductees to the Oklahoma Child Advocacy’s Children’s Hall of Fame and received the Friends of Children Award from the Oklahoma Association for the Education of Young Children.  She is also an inductee into the Oklahoma African American Hall of Fame. In 2003, Monson was recognized in Italy by the Tuscan regional government for her work in human rights, receiving the Silver Banner Award, the highest honor conferred by the Tuscan government and was also honored by the Brazilian government for her work with women’s rights organizations in that country.

Patricia Loughlin

Patti Loughlin is Professor of History at the University of Central Oklahoma. She specializes in the history of the American West, American Indian history, and women’s and gender history. From 2007-2013 she directed UCO’s American Democracy Project, a national civic engagement initiative focusing on increasing civic engagement among college students. Patti serves on the Oklahoma Historical Society board of directors, the editorial boards of the Western Historical Quarterly and The Chronicles of Oklahoma, and remains active in the Coalition for Western Women’s History and the Western History Association. Her book, Hidden Treasures of the American West: Muriel H. Wright, Angie Debo and Alice Marriott (University of New Mexico Press, 2005), received the Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History from the Oklahoma Historical Society and the Director's Award and Finalist in Nonfiction from the Oklahoma Center for the Book in 2006. She coauthored Building Traditions, Educating Generations: A History of the University of Central Oklahoma (Oklahoma Heritage Association, 2007) with Bob Burke and co-edited Main Street Oklahoma: An American Story (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013) with Linda Reese. Her latest book Angie Debo, Daughter of the Prairie (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Hall of Fame, 2017), received the 2018 Oklahoma Book Award for children/young adult.

Jeanette Mendez

Jeanette Mendez joined the OSU faculty in 2005 and is currently Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education. She is also a Professor of Political Science. Previously she served as Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Associate Dean of Research and Facilities for the College of Arts and Sciences and Department Head of Political Science, all at OSU. Mendez graduated from Santa Clara University in 1998, receiving a B.S. in Combined Sciences. From there she went to Indiana University, earning an M.A. in Political Science in 2000 and a Ph.D. in Political Science in 2003.

Dr. Mendez’s research focuses primarily on political information processing, political behavior and political communication.  Her recent work includes studying gendered patterns in perception of candidates for political office.  She is a leading expert on women running for office, and elections more broadly.  She regularly provides commentary to local and national media outlets including MSNBC and KOCO News 5, and a variety of print outlets. She is the author of the book Descriptive Elections: Empowering the American Electorate, and over thirty-five peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.  Her work has been published in leading journals including Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, Political Psychology, Politics and Gender, Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, PS: Political Science and Politics, Journal of Media Psychology, and Journal of Political Science.  Dr. Mendez served four years as co-editor of Political Research Quarterly, a high impact generalist journal in political science.  She also continues to teach courses in Public Opinion, Voting and Elections and Survey Research.

As a first generation college student, Dr. Mendez knows firsthand the value of an undergraduate education and understands the importance of a land grant education.  She understands the challenges many students face based on her own personal experiences, where she struggled to connect during her first year and find a major.  Her experiences with undergraduate research and study abroad, along with the mentorship of her advisor and a key faulty member has shaped her advocacy for students and faculty throughout her career.