Lynn Hardy Yeakel

Yeakel is the founder and president of Vision 2020, a national initiative of the Drexel University Women's Equality Initiative Institute to achieve women’s economic, political and social equality with its focus on the year 2020, the 100th anniversary of women’s voting rights. A coalition of almost 100 national and regional organizations representing over 22 million people, and women leaders who are Delegates across the country, Vision 2020 ignited an American Conversation on Women and Leadership in 2010. Its goal is to achieve shared leadership among women and men in all aspects of American life, beginning with business and government. Yeakel was a founder of Women’s Way, the first and largest women’s fundraising coalition in the nation, and served as its CEO from 1980 until 1992, when she ran for the U.S. Senate. She drew national attention in what was called the “Year of the Woman,” winning the primary and nearly unseating the longtime incumbent. In 1994, she was appointed by President Clinton to the position of Mid-Atlantic Regional Director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Ms. Yeakel died on Jan. 13 2022 at a medical center in Fort Myers, Fla. She was 80. The cause was complications of a blood cancer, said her husband, Paul Yeakel. They lived in Rosemont, Pa., and had a second home in Florida. Lynn Moore Hardy was born on July 9, 1941, in Portsmouth, Va. Her father, Porter Hardy Jr., a businessman, was a Democratic member of Congress from 1947 to 1968. Lynn grew up in Virginia and went to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph College) in Lynchburg, Va. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1963 with a major in French literature. Much later, in 2005, she earned a master’s degree in management from the American College of Financial Services in King of Prussia, Pa. She married Paul M. Yeakel in 1965. In addition to her husband, she is survived by her daughter, Courtney; her son, Paul Jr.; and six grandchildren.