In My Civic Era: Women, Civic Leadership & Local Government

Hosted by Ashley "Lemon" Price

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Episodes

193

Latest episode

Nov 2026

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EN-US

About the show

In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it. Hosted by Ashley Price, this podcast covers civic engagement, local government, and public policy for women who want the board seat, a voice at the county commission meeting, and a say in what happens at the state Capitol. Every week you'll hear how civic life actually works: how to get appointed to a board, how a bill becomes law, how to talk to your elected officials, what to say with three minutes at public comment, and who to call when the road floods and nobody is fixing it. You'll also hear what Ashley is learning in real time as she works on legislation, serves on boards, and studies public administration. You won't hear me tell you how to vote. You will hear how the room works and how to walk into it.

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60 recent

November 2, 202618 min

Voting Is the Bare Minimum: Civic Engagement After Election Day

Send us Fan Mail Civic engagement doesn't end when you leave the polling place. Voting every two to four years is the bare minimum, and the real work happens at the meetings almost nobody attends. In this election-week episode, Lemon Price shares why 12,000 people saw her nonpartisan voting post but fewer than 100 read it, what Georgians keep missing at the bottom of the ballot, and how she built relationships with local officials in under a year after moving somewhere new. You'll walk away with a plan for the day after the election, whether your candidate wins or loses. Share it with a friend who's voting Tuesday, and tag Lemon on Instagram when you vote. Mentioned in this episode: Last week's episode: Civility and the Future of Local Democracy Georgia's 2026 constitutional amendments, explained (WSB-TV) Georgia runoff information (Georgia.gov) My SAVE Act piece on Civic Era My Instagram In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price. Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/ Join the Well Lived Society membership , where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode. Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show. I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.

October 26, 202621 min

Civility and the Future of Local Democracy

Send us Fan Mail Civic engagement starts in the local meeting room, and right now that room is getting meaner. 83% of women in local office say hostility has made them less willing to do parts of the job, and when they step back, the questions they would have asked go unasked. In this episode, Ashley Price takes the word civility back from tone-policing, walks through the data on harassment, news deserts, and trust in local government, and introduces Civility With a Spine: five moves for women who want to stay firm on the issue and still be the person everyone takes a meeting with. Share it with the woman who says she'd never run because people are too mean, and tag Ashley on LinkedIn. Sources : BDI–CivicPulse Survey, Q3 2025 : 54% insulted, 37% harassed, 17% threatened BDI briefing on 2025 findings : 73% less willing (up from 66%); 83% of women ADL and BDI threats dataset : women targeted 3.4x more than men BDI school board survey, 2024 : one in five women vs one in ten men worry about attacks Leading Under Pressure briefing book, Mayors Innovation Project : 84% of women mayors harassed Medill State of Local News 2025 : 213 news desert counties, 1,524 with one source, 50 million affected Carnegie: Does Local News Reduce Polarization? : shrinking newsrooms, fewer local candidates Gallup trust in government : about two-thirds trust local government Michigan Public Policy Survey, spring 2025 : 40% of officials trust residents, down from 65% in 2020 In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price. Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/ Join the Well Lived Society membership , where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode. Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show. I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.

October 19, 202619 min

Name Changes, Voter Registration & Women in Politics | SAVE Act

Send us Fan Mail Women’s political participation can hinge on a name matching the right documents. Ashley explains what the SAVE America Act could mean for voter registration, why it stalled in the Senate, and how state proof-of-citizenship rules may affect voters whose names changed after marriage. Learn what to check before registering and why these rules matter for civic engagement. No telling you how to vote. Ever. Just what’s happening, what both sides are saying, and what you need to do so nobody gets turned away on a technicality. In this episode: What the SAVE America Act would actually do, in plain English The 14 states with their own proof-of-citizenship laws, and the 11 states voting on related ballot measures Suffragist Lucy Stone, who was turned away from voting over her last name Why name-matching hits married and divorced women, military families, and rural voters hardest What “just bring your documents” actually costs Both sides of the debate, fairly How to use your power at the state level, whatever side you’re on Your 7-step checklist for this week Your checklist: Check your voter registration at vote.org Look up your state’s rules if your name changed Find your marriage certificate, divorce decree, or name-change order Make a vital-documents folder Get a passport in your current legal name Read your ballot measures before you vote Send this episode to one woman who got married recently Read the full breakdown with sources on Substack. Look up your sample ballot: ballotpedia.org/Sample_Ballot_Lookup In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price. Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/ Join the Well Lived Society membership , where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode. Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show. I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.

October 15, 202639 min

Other Mommy and the Punishment of Ambitious Women

Send us Fan Mail A woman works late, and a monster comes for her child. That’s the plot of Other Mommy , and Lemon is not okay about it. In this bonus episode, she breaks down the movie, the novel Fallow , Turning Point USA’s “wife school” messaging, and a tech CEO’s idea to end divorce with oxytocin. She also shares her own experience as the only woman at a company. Then she brings it home with the new State of the Georgia Girl Report, the childcare and paid leave numbers behind the message, and what you can actually do about it. Send this to a woman who’s been getting the call for years. In this episode: Why Other Mommy ’s perfect mother and its monster are the same character Russell gets high during a kitchen fire and still gets a pass Fallow by Sarah Anderson: a great first 70%, then an ending where the main character makes no choices and nobody faces consequences Trad wife or ambitious woman, and a punishment either way Turning Point USA’s wife school promo and Erika Kirk on boss babe culture Palmer Luckey’s “oxytocin doping for marriage counseling,” next to the fact that women initiate 69% of divorces My time as the only woman at a company, and what happened when I advocated for women-owned businesses The 2026 State of the Georgia Girl Report: “The girl who is rising and the girl who is struggling are the same girl” Child care that costs almost as much as housing, Pre-K seats, paid leave, and after-school gaps What to do: speak up in the room, build a coalition, show up where the defaults get set, and be the caring adult for a girl who isn’t yours Read the full piece, with every source: Civic Era on Substack Mentioned in this episode: How to speak at public meetings (last episode) State of the Georgia Girl Report 2026 Fallow by Sarah Anderson Palmer Luckey on oxytocin and divorce Women initiate 69% of divorces, American Sociological Association Who gets the call in your house? Send me a message. I want to know. The jobs number I was trying to remember: in the July 2026 jobs report, women accounted for all of the labor force decline, and about 845,000 women have left the labor force since January. In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price. Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/ Join the Well Lived Society membership , where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode. Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show. I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.

October 12, 202630 min

Public Comment Is Not a Vent Session: Speaking at City Council, School Board, and County Meetings

Send us Fan Mail Civic engagement starts with knowing how local politics works—and how to make public comment count. Ashley Price explains who is listening at city council, school board, and county meetings, why comments often fail to influence decisions, and how to use your limited time more strategically. Hear what went wrong at a Statesboro city council meeting over a data center rezoning, plus what happened after a two-minute school board comment. Get practical guidance for speaking to local elected officials and turning a community concern into a stronger case for action. You’ll walk away knowing how to read the agenda and the packet, find the rules, figure out who actually has authority over your issue, and build a comment around one ask and one story. Plus what to do the day after so it counts. Your assignment this week: pull up the next agenda for your school board, city council, or county commission, find the public comment rules, and put the date on your calendar. Join the Civic Operating Room (free) Three weeks of live calls, Sundays at 7 p.m. Eastern. You’ll understand what’s going on civically where you live and build your own game plan to get involved. Can’t make it live? The calls stay in the community. Donations are optional and go toward the cost of running the training. Join the community: lemonprice.co/civicera Donate here. Mentioned in this episode Statesboro City Council public comment on the rezoning. In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price. Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/ Join the Well Lived Society membership , where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode. Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show. I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.

October 5, 202613 min

Welcome to Your Civic Era

Send us Fan Mail I ghosted you like a bad Hinge match, and I owe you an explanation. In this episode, I'm telling you what the last six weeks actually held: meetings with legislators across Georgia, a bill that could impact 1.7 million children, an affordability symposium that started as a conversation with the mayor, and a new seat on my county library board. My whole life went civic, so this podcast is going with it. The show is now In My Civic Era. From here on out, I'm teaching you how to get things done where you live: how to get appointed, who to call when the road floods and nobody is fixing it, and what to say with three minutes at a microphone. I will never tell you how to vote. Next week: a framework for public comment. Mentioned in this episode She Should Run Local Leader Lab: https://sheshouldrun.org/local-leader-lab/ Schools Beyond Screens: https://www.schoolsbeyondscreens.com/ United Way's ALICE data: https://www.unitedforalice.org/ In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price. Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/ Join the Well Lived Society membership , where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode. Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show. I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.

August 17, 202625 min

Nobody Gets to Write Your Story But You with Molly Kennedy

Send us Fan Mail Most of us have spent our whole lives quietly accepting somebody else's definition of who we are. Mother. Wife. The reliable one. The one who supposedly can't. This week I'm talking with Molly Kennedy, a disability advocate, speaker, and founder of Molly Kennedy Consulting, who has spent her life refusing to let other people's expectations become her reality. We get into what it actually looks like to adapt instead of shrink, why advocating for yourself is the least selfish thing you can do, and how she built a nonprofit to get more women with disabilities into leadership and at the table. You'll walk away looking sideways at the labels you've quietly accepted, and rethinking what you're actually capable of building. Give it a listen, share it with a woman who needs it, and come tell me what you think on LinkedIn. In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price. Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/ Join the Well Lived Society membership , where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode. Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show. I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.

August 3, 202640 min

Women Don't Have a Confidence Problem. We Have a Belief Problem.

Send us Fan Mail In 1989, Dr. Fay Niewiadomski had 50 cents in her bank account, four kids, an abusive husband, and a job as a university dean in an active war zone. She looked at all of it and decided to start a business anyway. In this conversation, Fay and Lemon dig into why women are brilliant at living small, how bedtime fairy tales conditioned us to be silent and compliant before we could even read, and why the beliefs you accepted without questioning have become a mental prison you hold the key to. Fay shares the three pillars of real leadership from her new book, Decisions That Matter, and the question-asking technique that lets you disagree in any room without losing it. If you have ever stayed quiet because you wanted to be liked, this one is going to sting a little. Share it with a friend who needs it, leave a review, and tag us on LinkedIn. Connect with Dr. Fay: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fayniewiadomski/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fayniewiadomski/ Substack: https://substack.com/@fayniewiadomski Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ICTNLLPUK YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ICTNonline Media Appearances: https://www.ictn.com/news-events/ Blog: https://www.ictn.com/blog/ In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price. Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/ Join the Well Lived Society membership , where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode. Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show. I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.

July 27, 202622 min

Stop Leading in Silos: The Hidden Cost of Fragmenting Yourself

Send us Fan Mail Organizations fail when everyone operates in their own lane. But here's what I realized at the Community Development Society conference: we're doing this in our own lives, and we're calling it normal. When you fragment yourself across different rooms — professional Lemon, civic Lemon, friend Lemon — you miss board seats, unlock opportunities stay invisible, and slowly lose yourself. In this episode, I'm breaking down what silos actually cost you, what whole-human leadership looks like, and three practical steps to integrate your life so you can stop being different versions of yourself everywhere you go. If you're tired of compartmentalizing, this one's for you. Share it with a woman who's operating as five different people, and tag me on LinkedIn, I want to know who's ready to lead whole. In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price. Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/ Join the Well Lived Society membership , where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode. Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show. I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.

July 20, 202632 min

Good Mom Mode Is Making You Disappear with Coach Whit

Send us Fan Mail Ask a mom who is in her family, and she will list everyone but herself. That is where this conversation starts. My guest is Coach Whit, a mother of five, avid CrossFitter, and coach who helps overwhelmed women stop disappearing into motherhood, marriage, and work. We talk about what actually goes first when you slip into good mom mode (spoiler: it is your body, your sleep, and your sense of self), why doomscrolling is sedation and not rest, and why the habit advice you keep failing at was never built for moms in the first place. I also share the guilt spiral I went through going back to graduate school this year, how my kids panicked at first, and how they now check on my grades and tell me they are proud of me. Because they are watching. What you model becomes what they believe is possible. In this episode: How Whit defines mom code switching, and why "I don't have time" usually means "I stopped making the time" Why doomscrolling and the nightly glass of wine are sedation, not self-care The ten-minute rule: starting so small it feels almost silly Mom guilt, quality over quantity, and what your kids actually want from you My grad school story, the needlepoint club, and coffee with the birds Date night rules: no kids, no work, no community projects The ripple effect of not choosing yourself, and how to snap back when you start disappearing again Connect with Coach Whit: Website: apogeewoman.com Facebook and Instagram: @CoachWit If this episode hit home, send it to the friend who has not showered in peace since 2022. And if you have a minute, leave a review. It genuinely helps more women find the show. In My Civic Era is the civic playbook for women leaving their community better than they found it, hosted by Ashley Price. Read the deeper dives on Substack: https://civicera.substack.com/ Join the Well Lived Society membership , where I teach you how to set up your life so you have room to lead: Join Here Know a woman who should be in the room? Send her this episode. Leave a review. It's the fastest way to help other women find the show. I will never tell you how to vote. I just want you to walk in prepared.