In My Civic Era: Women, Civic Leadership & Local Government

By Ashley "Lemon" PriceSociety & Culture Business Government Non-Profit

In My Civic Era: Women, Civic Leadership & Local Government episodes

October 26Civility and the Future of Local Democracy
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Civic engagement starts in the local meeting room, and right now that room is getting meaner. 83% of women in local office say hostility has made them less willing to do parts of the job, and when they step back, the questions they would have asked go unasked.

In this episode, Ashley Price takes the word civility back from tone-policing, walks through the data on harassment, news deserts, and trust in local government, and introduces Civility With a Spine: five moves for women who want to stay firm on the issue and still be the person everyone takes a meeting with. Share it with the woman who says she'd never run because people are too mean, and tag Ashley on LinkedIn.
Sources:
BDI–CivicPulse Survey, Q3 2025: 54% insulted, 37% harassed, 17% threatened
BDI briefing on 2025 findings: 73% less willing (up from 66%); 83% of women
ADL and BDI threats dataset: women targeted 3.4x more than men
BDI school board survey, 2024: one in five women vs one in ten men worry about attacks
Leading Under Pressure briefing book, Mayors Innovation Project: 84% of women mayors harassed
Medill State of Local News 2025: 213 news desert counties, 1,524 with one source, 50 million affected
Carnegie: Does Local News Reduce Polarization?: shrinking newsrooms, fewer local candidates
Gallup trust in government: about two-thirds trust local government
Michigan Public Policy Survey, spring 2025: 40% of officials trust residents, down from 65% in 2020
In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price.
Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/
Join the Well Lived Society membership, where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here
Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode.
Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show.
I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.
22 min
October 19Name Changes, Voter Registration & Women in Politics | SAVE Act
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Women’s political participation can hinge on a name matching the right documents. Ashley explains what the SAVE America Act could mean for voter registration, why it stalled in the Senate, and how state proof-of-citizenship rules may affect voters whose names changed after marriage. Learn what to check before registering and why these rules matter for civic engagement.
No telling you how to vote. Ever. Just what’s happening, what both sides are saying, and what you need to do so nobody gets turned away on a technicality.
In this episode:
What the SAVE America Act would actually do, in plain English
The 14 states with their own proof-of-citizenship laws, and the 11 states voting on related ballot measures
Suffragist Lucy Stone, who was turned away from voting over her last name
Why name-matching hits married and divorced women, military families, and rural voters hardest
What “just bring your documents” actually costs
Both sides of the debate, fairly
How to use your power at the state level, whatever side you’re on
Your 7-step checklist for this week
Your checklist:
Check your voter registration at vote.org
Look up your state’s rules if your name changed
Find your marriage certificate, divorce decree, or name-change order
Make a vital-documents folder
Get a passport in your current legal name
Read your ballot measures before you vote
Send this episode to one woman who got married recently
Read the full breakdown with sources on Substack.
Look up your sample ballot: ballotpedia.org/Sample_Ballot_Lookup
In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price.
Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/
Join the Well Lived Society membership, where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here
Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode.
Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show.
I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.
20 min
October 15Other Mommy and the Punishment of Ambitious Women
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A woman works late, and a monster comes for her child. That’s the plot of Other Mommy, and Lemon is not okay about it. In this bonus episode, she breaks down the movie, the novel Fallow, Turning Point USA’s “wife school” messaging, and a tech CEO’s idea to end divorce with oxytocin. She also shares her own experience as the only woman at a company. Then she brings it home with the new State of the Georgia Girl Report, the childcare and paid leave numbers behind the message, and what you can actually do about it. Send this to a woman who’s been getting the call for years.
In this episode:
Why Other Mommy’s perfect mother and its monster are the same character
Russell gets high during a kitchen fire and still gets a pass
Fallow by Sarah Anderson: a great first 70%, then an ending where the main character makes no choices and nobody faces consequences
Trad wife or ambitious woman, and a punishment either way
Turning Point USA’s wife school promo and Erika Kirk on boss babe culture
Palmer Luckey’s “oxytocin doping for marriage counseling,” next to the fact that women initiate 69% of divorces
My time as the only woman at a company, and what happened when I advocated for women-owned businesses
The 2026 State of the Georgia Girl Report: “The girl who is rising and the girl who is struggling are the same girl”
Child care that costs almost as much as housing, Pre-K seats, paid leave, and after-school gaps
What to do: speak up in the room, build a coalition, show up where the defaults get set, and be the caring adult for a girl who isn’t yours
Read the full piece, with every source: Civic Era on Substack
Mentioned in this episode:
How to speak at public meetings (last episode)
State of the Georgia Girl Report 2026
Fallow by Sarah Anderson
Palmer Luckey on oxytocin and divorce
Women initiate 69% of divorces, American Sociological Association
Who gets the call in your house? Send me a message. I want to know.
The jobs number I was trying to remember: in the July 2026 jobs report, women accounted for all of the labor force decline, and about 845,000 women have left the labor force since January.
In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price.
Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/
Join the Well Lived Society membership, where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here
Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode.
Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show.
I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.
40 min
October 12 Public Comment Is Not a Vent Session: Speaking at City Council, School Board, and County Meetings
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Civic engagement starts with knowing how local politics works—and how to make public comment count. Ashley Price explains who is listening at city council, school board, and county meetings, why comments often fail to influence decisions, and how to use your limited time more strategically.
Hear what went wrong at a Statesboro city council meeting over a data center rezoning, plus what happened after a two-minute school board comment. Get practical guidance for speaking to local elected officials and turning a community concern into a stronger case for action.
You’ll walk away knowing how to read the agenda and the packet, find the rules, figure out who actually has authority over your issue, and build a comment around one ask and one story. Plus what to do the day after so it counts.
Your assignment this week: pull up the next agenda for your school board, city council, or county commission, find the public comment rules, and put the date on your calendar.
Join the Civic Operating Room (free)
Three weeks of live calls, Sundays at 7 p.m. Eastern. You’ll understand what’s going on civically where you live and build your own game plan to get involved. Can’t make it live? The calls stay in the community. Donations are optional and go toward the cost of running the training.
Join the community: lemonprice.co/civicera
Donate here.
Mentioned in this episode
Statesboro City Council public comment on the rezoning.
In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price.
Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/
Join the Well Lived Society membership, where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here
Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode.
Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show.
I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.
31 min
October 05Welcome to Your Civic Era
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I ghosted you like a bad Hinge match, and I owe you an explanation. In this episode, I'm telling you what the last six weeks actually held: meetings with legislators across Georgia, a bill that could impact 1.7 million children, an affordability symposium that started as a conversation with the mayor, and a new seat on my county library board. My whole life went civic, so this podcast is going with it.
The show is now In My Civic Era. From here on out, I'm teaching you how to get things done where you live: how to get appointed, who to call when the road floods and nobody is fixing it, and what to say with three minutes at a microphone. I will never tell you how to vote.
Next week: a framework for public comment.
Mentioned in this episode
She Should Run Local Leader Lab: https://sheshouldrun.org/local-leader-lab/
Schools Beyond Screens: https://www.schoolsbeyondscreens.com/
United Way's ALICE data: https://www.unitedforalice.org/
In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price.
Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/
Join the Well Lived Society membership, where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here
Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode.
Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show.
I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.
14 min
August 17 Nobody Gets to Write Your Story But You with Molly Kennedy
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Most of us have spent our whole lives quietly accepting somebody else's definition of who we are. Mother. Wife. The reliable one. The one who supposedly can't.
This week I'm talking with Molly Kennedy, a disability advocate, speaker, and founder of Molly Kennedy Consulting, who has spent her life refusing to let other people's expectations become her reality. We get into what it actually looks like to adapt instead of shrink, why advocating for yourself is the least selfish thing you can do, and how she built a nonprofit to get more women with disabilities into leadership and at the table.
You'll walk away looking sideways at the labels you've quietly accepted, and rethinking what you're actually capable of building. Give it a listen, share it with a woman who needs it, and come tell me what you think on LinkedIn.
In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price.
Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/
Join the Well Lived Society membership, where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here
Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode.
Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show.
I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.
26 min
August 03 Women Don't Have a Confidence Problem. We Have a Belief Problem.
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In 1989, Dr. Fay Niewiadomski had 50 cents in her bank account, four kids, an abusive husband, and a job as a university dean in an active war zone. She looked at all of it and decided to start a business anyway. In this conversation, Fay and Lemon dig into why women are brilliant at living small, how bedtime fairy tales conditioned us to be silent and compliant before we could even read, and why the beliefs you accepted without questioning have become a mental prison you hold the key to. Fay shares the three pillars of real leadership from her new book, Decisions That Matter, and the question-asking technique that lets you disagree in any room without losing it. If you have ever stayed quiet because you wanted to be liked, this one is going to sting a little. Share it with a friend who needs it, leave a review, and tag us on LinkedIn.
Connect with Dr. Fay:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fayniewiadomski/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fayniewiadomski/
Substack: https://substack.com/@fayniewiadomski
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ICTNLLPUK
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ICTNonline
Media Appearances: https://www.ictn.com/news-events/
Blog: https://www.ictn.com/blog/
In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price.
Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/
Join the Well Lived Society membership, where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here
Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode.
Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show.
I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.
41 min
July 27 Stop Leading in Silos: The Hidden Cost of Fragmenting Yourself
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Organizations fail when everyone operates in their own lane. But here's what I realized at the Community Development Society conference: we're doing this in our own lives, and we're calling it normal.
When you fragment yourself across different rooms — professional Lemon, civic Lemon, friend Lemon — you miss board seats, unlock opportunities stay invisible, and slowly lose yourself. In this episode, I'm breaking down what silos actually cost you, what whole-human leadership looks like, and three practical steps to integrate your life so you can stop being different versions of yourself everywhere you go.
If you're tired of compartmentalizing, this one's for you. Share it with a woman who's operating as five different people, and tag me on LinkedIn, I want to know who's ready to lead whole.
In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price.
Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/
Join the Well Lived Society membership, where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here
Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode.
Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show.
I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.
23 min
July 20Good Mom Mode Is Making You Disappear with Coach Whit
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Ask a mom who is in her family, and she will list everyone but herself.
That is where this conversation starts. My guest is Coach Whit, a mother of five, avid CrossFitter, and coach who helps overwhelmed women stop disappearing into motherhood, marriage, and work. We talk about what actually goes first when you slip into good mom mode (spoiler: it is your body, your sleep, and your sense of self), why doomscrolling is sedation and not rest, and why the habit advice you keep failing at was never built for moms in the first place.
I also share the guilt spiral I went through going back to graduate school this year, how my kids panicked at first, and how they now check on my grades and tell me they are proud of me. Because they are watching. What you model becomes what they believe is possible.
In this episode:
How Whit defines mom code switching, and why "I don't have time" usually means "I stopped making the time"
Why doomscrolling and the nightly glass of wine are sedation, not self-care
The ten-minute rule: starting so small it feels almost silly
Mom guilt, quality over quantity, and what your kids actually want from you
My grad school story, the needlepoint club, and coffee with the birds
Date night rules: no kids, no work, no community projects
The ripple effect of not choosing yourself, and how to snap back when you start disappearing again
Connect with Coach Whit:
Website: apogeewoman.com
Facebook and Instagram: @CoachWit
If this episode hit home, send it to the friend who has not showered in peace since 2022. And if you have a minute, leave a review. It genuinely helps more women find the show.
In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price.
Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/
Join the Well Lived Society membership, where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here
Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode.
Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show.
I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.
33 min
July 13 Women's Leadership Programs Are Setting You Up to Fail
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Leadership programs for women fall into two camps: the ones teaching you to lead like a man, and the ones telling you to wait for a full moon before you launch. Both are setting you up to fail.

In this episode, Lemon breaks down why the masculine approach leaves you fractured and exhausted, why the woo-woo approach leaves you ineffective and broke, and what actually works instead: integration.

Listen if you're tired of choosing between power and presence, ambition and devotion, pragmatism and intuition.
In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price.
Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/
Join the Well Lived Society membership, where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here
Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode.
Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show.
I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.
17 min