Oral History Program Judge Shauna Kerr Interviewed by Tamitha Romanick 3 April 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Judge Shauna Kerr Interviewed by Tamitha Romanick 3 April 2017 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Kerr, Shauna, an oral history by Tamitha Romanick, 3 April 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Judge Shauna Kerr Circa 2017 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Judge Shauna Kerr, conducted on April 3, 2017, at the Summit County Justice Center in Park City, Utah, by Tamitha Romanick. Shauna discusses her life and her experiences as a minority leader in Northern Utah. TR: This is an oral history interview with Judge Shauna Kerr of Park City, UT. She was former Summit County Commissioner (2001-2005). This interview is being conducted on April 3, 2017 at the Summit County Justice Center in Park City, Utah. Our concern of focus is women in leadership. The interviewer is Tamitha Romanick. First question, can you start by telling us about your background, your childhood, teen years, where you grew up, family values, education, etc.? SK: I am a Utah native. I grew up in Cache Valley. I am the only girl in the family of four. I have three brothers, two older and one younger. Growing up like that in a rural area in farmland and things, one becomes quite tough. I had to be the meanest of the Kerr boys, so I played a lot of sports. TR: What was your favorite? SK: I played a lot of baseball, I really like baseball. I like volleyball and softball. My brothers all pitched baseball, so I ended up being their designated catcher. I got pretty good at letting them burn. I grew up with brothers, and the interesting thing is my parents got married very young. My mother was 15, my dad was 21. They had four children by the time she was 21. My father worked away from home on construction a lot, and she was like a single parent in a different generation. She dropped out of high school, so she hadn’t finished high school. We had an educational process where in the evening she would gather us around and set up 1 the encyclopedias, and we would open the encyclopedias up to any page and just learn about that. She had a very curious mind with no formal education and she wanted us to be learners. I was the first person in our family to graduate from college. My two older brothers followed behind me. One was on a mission and got two years behind me. One thing about our family is we lived in a little community, and my parents were very active in the community when it came to spring cleanups and tree plantings. So we learned to work hard early on, and when other kids were doing spring breaks, we would be doing spring cleanings and things like that. In the fall, when people were away on trips, we would always be harvesting the garden, vegetables, potatoes, and things. We learned to be givers to our community because the town didn’t have personnel and staff to do the work. So that was kind of instilled in me, community and giving back. For our communities and common unities to thrive, we need self-starters and volunteerism, so I grew up with that. I was a good student and played a lot of sports. My first experience in leadership was in team sports. I would be relied upon in many situations and leadership roles just in the team sports. Then in Jr. High, I was elected in seventh grade as class secretary. In my ninth-grade year, I was student body vicepresident, where I did some leadership roles there. During high school, I started waitressing when I was 15 years old and worked through high school, college, and law school to support my education and myself, so I learned the value of 2 hard work, service, community, and to value people. To help instill in others that community and belonging and their need to be a part of it. TR: Great. Thanks. What experiences did you have in your childhood, teen years, and adult years that led you to believe that you were or could be a leader? SK: I think people looked up to me because I was a good student. They would come to me to help them with their homework assignments. The same thing with the leadership in the sports. Also, the teachers and others in the community knew that if I took something on, I would get it finished. Those experiences taught me that I could lead and take a role in that. TR: What are your core values? How have they influenced your leadership experiences and abilities? SK: My real core values are truthfulness, honesty, and fulfilling your promises. If you say you are going to do something, you do it. Hard work is a value. I go back to John F. Kennedy, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country?” I believe to my core that is what we are missing in our generations today. Everybody is like, “What are you going to give me? What do I get?” People always want to come to court and talk about their constitutional rights, but having those rights are a responsibility. That is something that goes to my care values. We are a free nation because we worked hard for it, and we need to continue to work hard to secure that. I think that we are a country in crisis over truthfulness and honesty. Those are my core values. 3 TR: Yeah, I agree. Name a person who has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader, maybe someone who has been a mentor to you? Why and how did this person impact your life: both generally, and your leadership abilities, specifically? SK: I gave that a lot of thought, and I was looking at people that I had worked with over the years and supported me, and I came up with Ken Bullock. He is the Executive Director of the League of Cities and Towns for the last 20-something years. TR: In Salt Lake City? SK: In Salt Lake, yes. Ken was one of those people that would recognize leadership in others, empower them, and base them in the right committees and introduce them to the right people. He is the master of networking and making sure that he recognizes your strengths. He sends that and celebrates that with others. I met him in my first job as city attorney in Tooele in the early 80’s. At that time, I was a young female lawyer and there weren’t many of us. I was about 24 or 25 or 26, and I had a really important role as city attorney in Tooele. Ken put me on some committees and introduced me to some of the older city attorneys. They had more experience under their belts, and other local government, and even served on committees with him. The one thing I really valued about him was that he was one of the people who bust the bribery scandal about the 2002 Olympics bribery scandal, even though it was not a very popular decision for him. It pained him because he wanted the Olympics to be successful, but he did not want to be soiled by the corruption of the bidding process. I went through a lot discussions with him, and I 4 watched how agonizing it was for him to stand up for his core beliefs, and I really respected him for it. I continue to respect Ken and his leadership role for me. He enabled me and empowered me to be more active in local government throughout the state. TR: That is a great mentor. What do you see as the biggest challenges of being a woman leader in Northern Utah? What do you do to overcome these challenges? SK: It’s getting a little better. I have to report that the state of the union and being a woman in leadership is not as difficult as it once was. I haven’t had anyone recently tell me that I am not worth the same salary as a man. But my first job, I had an elected official tell me, “Well I can’t pay you what I paid the last attorney because he was married and he has a family that he is supporting, so he needed the money more.” It doesn’t matter what my situation is. I am doing the same job, and perhaps better. Equal pay for equal work. TR: Do you know what year that was? SK: That was about 1981 or 1982. I don’t encounter that anymore. I still encounter, for instance, when I was elected Summit County commissioner, I was the first woman to ever serve as a county commissioner in the 150 years in the county. It was an interesting situation because in those years of 1999-2000 there was what was called the “Gentleman’s Club Agreement” that one commissioner would be from the Park City side, one from South Summit/Kamas/Oakley area, and one from Northern Summit/Henefer/Coalville area. Well, it wasn’t written anywhere, because the voting isn’t into voting districts. I choose to run for the Northern Summit seat against a Republican male, who at the time, I believe was a bishop 5 in the Mormon church. So, it was quite controversial because you have a Democratic woman from Park City running for the “Gentleman’s Club” seat of North Summit, and I won the election. TR: Good for you! SK: It was interesting initially because things had been done the good ‘ole boy way. For many of the employees, female employees, in the county building, I actually think I empowered them to finally do their best work. Because for so long, they had been silenced or invisible, and since then we always have at least one woman in the city council. I had employees—women, at the county, come up to me and say how nice it was to finally understand that the other half of the population had representation. TR: Oh, that’s great! SK: The one thing that was really interesting—I will have to show you the picture— when I was the county commissioner here, and Summit County celebrated their sesquicentennial, their 150th birthday, that was when Olene Walker had become the Governor of Utah. She was Utah’s first female Governor, and I was the county’s first female commissioner, so we had a picture taken together at the ceremony. TR: That would be awesome to get or look at that picture. SK: With that picture, since it was the sesquicentennial, we were dressed up in period clothing from the year of the 1800’s. When we are finished here, I will grab it from my back room. That has been my experience, is that it is getting better. We still have few women in elected high positions in this state. Jan Graham was one of 6 my role models. She was the first female attorney general of the state, and she also was a wonderful mentor. To a lot of the female attorneys who were working in local government. TR: Great. What advice would you give emerging young women leaders in order to be successful? SK: First of all, I think there is a delicate balance between being too harsh, too rough, and abrasive, and being too feminine and foo-foo. It is a delicate balance, but it is a balance that maturity enables you to walk. I think that you can still be very feminine in your dress and your mannerisms and still be taken very seriously, but you want to watch that very carefully. You don’t want to be so harsh that your demeanor, it’s still interpreted differently. A man is a forceful negotiator, and a woman is a bitch—pure and simply. We saw that with the election with Trump and Hillary. She would take a position, something she said, then he would have said and it would have been neutral, but from her was way too harsh. That is still the communication, and is still a tricky field to walk. But I think the advice I would give them is, if you are smart, you will know your material. You can stand up to any man, and can present in any form, but you do have to be prepared. I do believe that it is still to the point that we prepare more than men do. It is important to be factual and actual, and once you compromise your credibility—which our president has done now—it really puts everything else at issue. Hillary’s creditability was compromised because of the email issues and other things, but President Trump now, with some of the things that has come out. I think that a leader has to be creditable, they have to be 7 believable. People rely on your honesty and your creditability, and once that’s gone, I think that is irretrievable. TR: That’s great advice. What other insights can you share about being a woman leader in Northern Utah? SK: One needs to be comfortable walking into a meeting, especially when the meeting is all-male, because statistically, there will still be meetings that everyone in the room may be male. The other thing is, in Northern Utah, there is still the church that plays into it. It’s still tricky with women and childcare, and getting the positions they deserve while balancing families and childcare. I know there are a lot of good families now that have the stay-at-home dad with a working mom, and that the economic balance has shifted, but it is still traditional in Utah, where the father works and the mother stays at home. TR: Have you noticed more stay-at-home men within the Mormon community? SK: Yes, I am seeing more of it in many situations. Particularly, with women who have jobs within technologies and things like that where literally they can make more than the husband. I have two friends right now, friends of my children, that are married with children that are couples and those couples are doing that. The wife is out working, and the husband is at home with the little ones for those first few years. I think we will see more of that equitable distribution—household responsibilities, child bearing responsibilities, and income producing responsibilities. TR: Yeah, great. I hope so. It is definitely shifting. SK: It is shifting. 8 TR: I think, coming from Nevada, it was more lenient. There was noticeably more women leaders in Nevada than I have noticed when coming into Utah. SK: Yes. Right. TR: It’s just a different vibe. The minute I came here, you can just kind of feel it. Just meeting people. Everyone is nice here. Extremely nice, but it is definitely different than in other states. SK: Right, and it appears to me that it is still the presumption that in Northern Utah, when you get married, you will take your husband’s name. Of course, I didn’t. Actually, the children have my name. He has a difficult name; his name is Dragolovich, so Kerr was much easier. I kept my maiden name, but so often when we are introduced, it’s like, “Mrs. Dragolovich.” It is still the presumption here that when you marry, you will have your husband’s name. TR: Is your husband a Utah native? SK: No, he is from Wisconsin. TR: Oh, okay, so he was a little open to it? SK: Yeah. TR: That’s good. I am sure if he was from Utah, it would have been more of a debate. SK: Different, yeah. Also, he was the youngest of 13 children, so the family name was not as important. TR: Like if he was the only son? SK: Yes. 9