This accidental Washington power broker has a lot to teach us about the grit and skills it takes to succeed gracefully while sticking to your beliefs.
Independent Women’s Forum is pleased to announce that Susan Hirschmann, one of Washington’s top lobbyists and a tireless promoter of networking opportunities for women, as the latest entry in our popular series of Champion Women profiles.
Hirschmann is chairman and CEO of Williams & Jensen, the high-powered Washington, D.C., law and lobbying firm. Hirschmann is a fixture on The Hill’s annual list of Washington’s top lobbyists. When she signed on at Williams & Jensen in 2002, the Washington Post declared Williams & Jensen was “the winner in the Susan Brackin Hirschmann sweepstakes.”
Since its founding more than 50 years ago, Williams & Jensen has been a bipartisan firm. Hirschmann has a background as a leader of some of the most influential Republican establishments. She was chief of staff to Tom DeLay, the former House Majority Leader. She served as executive director of Eagle Forum, the pro-family organization founded by the late Phyllis Schlafly. She has served as a board member of the Susan B. Anthony List, one of the country’s most visible pro-life organizations. Some denizens of the Washington swamp might be hesitant to sign onto such organizations.
Hirschmann has succeeded by not running away from who she is. “I try to be very careful with the clients I take,” she tells IWF, “because I don’t want to go to my friends to lobby them on behalf of an issue that I don’t think they should be supporting. I always try to put myself in the mindset of their staff.”
Throughout her career, Hirschmann has encouraged women to network. “When I was Tom’s chief,” she recalls, “I started pulling together all of the female chiefs of staff, because I found that women tended to sit in their office working and men were out networking. So, I decided that I was going to pull in the women and we were going to encourage women to network. The way professional life works is that usually when new jobs come along, people are put up for them and put up by someone who knows them. It’s hard for people to know how valuable you are if you don’t have a network of people that you work with. And so I thought it was so important for the women to do that networking.”
Realizing that all the golf lessons in the world weren’t going to help her make contacts on the golf course, Hirschmann came up with a novel idea: networking events at Tammy Nails, a manicure-pedicure salon on Capitol Hill. She says she “didn’t discriminate against men,” but they tended to help with drinks and be social participants at the gatherings.
Hirschmann hails from Alabama and still has a mellifluous southern accent. She is married to David Hirschmann, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They have one daughter.
We know you will enjoy meeting this prominent lobbyist and learning the secrets of her success.
