Roberta Madden is co-director of RATIFY ERA-NC, helped organize the new ERA-NC Alliance, and has served as its co-chair. Robbie played an active role in having the ERA introduced in both houses of the General Assembly in 2015. She lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment in Louisiana in the 1970s, testified for the ERA before legislative committees, and has been an ERA activist for 45 years.
The NAACP, the Louisiana Center for Women and Government, 100 Black Men, Leadership Greater Baton Rouge Alumni, and the Battered Women’s Center have honored her. In 2007 the national YWCA awarded her its One Imperative Award for her work on racial justice. Last year NC Women United presented her the Anne Mackie Award for lifetime achievement.
She also serves on the boards of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Corporation of the Swannanoa Valley and the Southern Mutual Help Association, as well as the Asheville YWCA’s Advocacy Committee and the AAUW’s Public Policy Committee. She was recently elected a member of the Women’s Forum of NC and is an at-large member of Business and Professional Women of NC.
Robbie graduated summa cum laude from Ohio University with a B.A. in political science and a membership in Phi Beta Kappa. Formerly she was employed at the YWCA of Greater Baton Rouge as Director of Racial and Social Justice, where she served for 18 years before moving to Black Mountain, NC in 2009.