Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey became the first elected female governor of her state last year, and one of the first two openly lesbian women elected governor anywhere in the U.S.
Now, she’s set to take over as the new chair of the Democratic Party’s Women Governors Fund, an initiative started by the Democratic Governors Association in 2018 that seeks to put more women in statewide executive office.
It’s a national platform for one of the party’s rising stars in state office — one that Healey can use to seek out and boost more future governors who may one day draw attention as national party leaders.
“When I was attorney general, I looked at the women who were governors and had been governors. I came to know many of them over the years, and I just had so much respect and admiration for them,” Healey told NBC News in an interview at the DGA’s annual holiday gathering in Phoenix.
“I saw what they did in their states. I saw the actions that they took that made a huge impact on the lives of their residents. And they really showed the way for somebody like me in terms of thinking about what it means to be a governor, what it means to have executive power,” Healey added.