Attorney and women’s rights advocate Sarah Weddington spoke to an audience about her various leadership positions, and offered advice to females on how to do the same at her lecture at Meredith College on April 12.

“The experience of college is really where I began to learn leadership,” she said. Weddington encouraged female college students in the audience to practice and learn leadership whenever possible. “I would like to see more women leading a leadership life.”

In 1973, Weddington worked pro bono to represent a group of women at the University of Texas. Through this association, she successfully argued the landmark case Roe v. Wade, at age 26. In doing so, Weddington became the youngest person to win a case before the Supreme Court.

She also began her political career in 1973, becoming the first woman elected to the Texas House of Representatives. She served in this position for three terms before becoming an assistant to President Jimmy Carter in 1978, directing the administration’s work on women’s issues and leadership outreach. She is the author of “A Question of Choice,” and teaches at the University of Texas.

But when Weddington was a young woman just out of law school, she couldn’t find a job as an attorney.

“It was just too early for women,” she said.

By the time Weddington’s case was heard in the U.S. Supreme Court, she said she had only done legal work in uncontested divorces, wills for people who had no money and an adoption for her uncle.

In those years she began to learn leadership skills by example.

“I have learned so much by watching people who did things well,” Weddington explained.

In addition to emulating others, Weddington said another key to obtaining leadership skills is finding a particular area of interest.

“The important thing is to find what you care about,” she said. “Find things that make you say ‘this ought to be different.’”

According to Weddington, learning leadership happens over a period of time.

“I do not believe you have to be perfect to begin to be a leader,” she said. “Life is a series of course corrections.”

Weddington’s lecture was part of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Presidential Lecture Series at Meredith College. Weddington was the second of three speakers to address Meredith’s college wide theme “That Status of Women.” Biblical historian Phyllis Trible, ’54, will visit campus for the final lecture of the 2006-07 academic year on April 25.