Those walking up Sweet Briar College’s Monument Hill on Founders’ Day to lay flowers at the Fletcher family gravesite had much to think about.

Convocation had just concluded and in keeping with custom, the speeches were about being “useful members of society.” When Indiana Fletcher Williams created the College for women in her will in 1899, she used those words to instruct what its mission should be.

Convocation opens Founders’ Day, a school tradition since 1909 that also has become the official start of Homecoming. It’s an occasion when Sweet Briar’s most generous donors are recognized and the Alumnae Association presents the Distinguished Alumna Award. Jennifer Crossland ’86, in her first Homecoming as president of the association, introduced this year’s recipient, Gay Hart Gaines ’59.

Prudence Bushnell delivered the keynote speech at Sweet Briar’s Founders’ Day Convocation. Aaron Mahler photoGaines – a former interior designer, political activist and champion of charitable causes – spoke passionately of her current, and favorite, role. She is the regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, which owns and maintains George Washington’s historic estate.

She also spoke of making a difference by taking action. “ ‘Do noble things, not dream them … ,’ ” she said, citing a poem by Charles Kingsley. “I believe most of us can do more than we are already doing.”

Prudence Bushnell, who delivered the keynote speech, is a person of action and her first-hand experiences gave her words even greater power. She spent 24 years in the U.S. State Department Foreign Service before becoming CEO of the consulting firm Sage Associates. Among her Foreign Service posts, she was the ambassador to Kenya in 1998 when al-Qaida bombed the embassy building in Nairobi.

Today “society” means the world community, she said, and women especially have the ability and responsibility to improve it by exercising “personal” leadership. This occurs not by virtue of one’s position but by always thinking strategically and behaving intentionally.

“Look at what Indiana Fletcher Williams did,” Bushnell said. “Profoundly affected by the death of her young daughter, Daisy, she created a vision and acted intentionally and strategically to leave not just a legacy but an endowment to create this College. Now Miss Indie may not have had a whole lot of opportunities to exercise formal leadership but she sure did exercise personal leadership.”

Bushnell told those gathered in Murchison Lane Auditorium what she has learned about leadership at both levels.

The procession up Monument Hill to lay flowers on the founders’ graves is an annual tradition. Aaron Mahler photoOne thing leaders do is listen to others. For two years Bushnell relayed to Washington the concerns of those in her mission that the embassy in Nairobi was vulnerable to terrorist attack. “Well I got attention, but it wasn’t the kind that I was looking forward to,” she said.

She was reprimanded in a performance evaluation, which so “irritated” her that she wrote a letter to the secretary of state. “Because I was a positional leader, I wanted to use personal leadership and by heaven I had responsibility for the security of my people,” she said.

Osama bin Laden’s truck bomb exploded in a rear parking lot of her embassy four months later, instantly killing 213 people and wounding thousands. As individuals stepped up to rebuild the organization, Bushnell discovered leadership’s most profound lesson: Taking care of your people.

With the mission crammed into another vulnerable building, Washington announced the Marines providing security were needed elsewhere. “Having been bombed once, I was told, unlikely you will be bombed again,” she said.

Chaplain Adam White leads the observance at the Fletcher family cemetery. Aaron Mahler photoIn protest, she said she would appear on television waving goodbye with tears streaming down her face. “You see, all you have to do is threaten to cry. Use whatever you have. Now it did nothing to enhance my career or my popularity but by heaven those Marines stayed until we left.”

Having a place at the table, even with lofty titles, isn’t always enough to be heard, she said, returning to the need for strategies and sometimes even gimmicks. “Never carry anything … and, if you can, go to the bathroom with a lot of people accompanying you. That’s what generals do.”

Women need their own set of tools, she said. Wear comfortable shoes, “because it’s very hard to exercise leadership when your feet are hurting.”

When she met with foreign government ministers, she instructed her aides to look – “preferably adoringly” – always at her so the official had no choice but to interact with her. Otherwise the men tended to address her male note taker.

She adopted a demeanor and tone that is assertive, confident and, when angry, focused, calm and low in pitch. She stopped making self-diminishing statements, such as “I’m no expert.” Upon figuring out the Washington culture, she consciously decided she needed to learn to interrupt.

When SBC President Elisabeth Muhlenfeld took the podium to conclude Convocation, she mused about how much the assembly had learned from the two women speakers.

“I have learned that it’s very important that the members of the Senior Staff gaze at me adoringly,” she said.

The applause was thunderous.