Charity Clark '93 on being first

Charity Clark ’93 is no stranger to being first. When she ran for Vermont Attorney General in 2022, she was the first Democratic woman in Vermont’s history to even run for that office. And, when she won the election, she became the first woman elected to the position of Attorney General. 

In her campaign video, Charity’s voiceover takes us through her lengthy resume and qualifications and her near decade of working in the Vermont Attorney General’s office as Assistant Attorney General and Chief of Staff. After listing several of her most salient accomplishments, including her support of small businesses, criminal justice reform, and privacy protections, the video gets to what many women in Vermont saw as the thing that simply needs to be said. 

“Twenty-five men and zero women have been elected Vermont Attorney General,” Charity states over a cascade of portraits of men who have served in the office she now holds as its first elected woman. “This August 9, you can vote for experience. You can vote for someone who knows how to fight for you. You can vote to shatter the glass ceiling.”

 

Her historic win as the first woman elected Attorney General puts Charity in good company with her Burr and Burton predecessors. In 1849, 16 intrepid women entered the halls of Burr Seminary for the first time as registered students, making this historic journey on the heels of a national women’s rights movement. The Seneca Falls Convention took place to the West of Burr Seminary in July 1848, just a handful of months before the Burr Seminary “forty-niners” took these historic steps nearly 175 years ago. 

“I’m really proud to have continued that tradition by being the first woman elected as Attorney General,” Charity said.

This summer, we met up with Charity over Zoom in the weeks following the July floods in Montpelier to reflect on her work as Attorney General, the causes she champions, and where her drive for justice and leadership was born. 

Charity began her legal career in 2005 as an associate at Downs Rachlin Martin in Burlington and later at Orrick in New York City. In 2014, she began working as an Assistant Attorney General in the Public Protection Division under former Attorney General Bill Sorrell and then served as Chief of Staff under Attorney General T.J. Donovan beginning in 2018. After graduating from Burr and Burton, Charity earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont and her law degree from Boston College Law School. Before entering law school, Charity was a policy analyst at the Vermont Governor’s Office. She has served on the Burr and Burton Board of Trustees since 2021.

As a student at Burr and Burton, Charity enjoyed many leadership roles, including as her class president for two years and as a representative of Burr and Burton’s Girls State contingent, visiting Montpelier. (American Legion Auxiliary Green Mountain Girls State is a leadership development program for rising high school seniors.) 

“I had never been to Montpelier before, and I don’t know exactly how I was chosen, but I am so grateful that I was because it really made a huge impression on me,” she said. “I went (for Girls State) the summer I turned 17, and four years later, I was an intern in the Governor’s office. It really wasn’t that much time, and by the time I was an intern, I knew so many things. I knew you couldn’t step on the House floor when they are in session, I knew where the bathrooms were. I just felt comfortable. I literally felt like this State House belongs to me too.”

As a Girls State member and president of her class, a career in politics may have seemed like the obvious end point for her. But, Charity categorizes other, less obvious experiences at Burr and Burton as pivotal moments in her leadership development, like a class trip to Spain, which helped her and her classmates feel independent and capable in unfamiliar surroundings. Or, helping to lead her soccer team. 

“Everybody had different strengths and weaknesses (on the soccer team),” she said. “As a leader, you’re trying to maximize everyone’s gifts and encourage them to improve so that you can get the best results for your team. That’s just like work, just like running an office.”

“I had a lot of opportunities to lead, and I had so many wonderful teachers,” Charity said. “You can see this same ethos now at Burr and Burton - the community and the teachers and staff want you to succeed. They believe in you. They are interested in you. They support you. So, of course, with that kind of nurturing environment, a leadership potential would be nurtured and grow.” 

Charity’s experience with leadership and seeking value in disparate perspectives is something deeply steeped in the DNA of Burr and Burton. Its Culture of Care is the deliberate creation of belonging through exposure to the experiences of others - something that Charity and alumni like her inherently understand through their work with peers and teammates. 

Growing up in the small towns of the Northshire, community here is more than just a buzzword. It is quite literally a lifeline and ethos. People look out for each other and pay attention to the needs of their neighbors in ways that can somehow feel like both a holdover from the past and a modern take on building healthy communities. 

For Charity, sowing the seeds of community was second nature as a 10th-generation Vermonter. “I was just oriented to care for my community because that’s what I was shown,” she said. “It was a small town, and if something needed to be done, and people needed to step up and help, we saw that.”

Charity worked at “Clark’s,” her family’s grocery store, every Saturday, which gave her intimate access to the workings of her community. “Londonderry is a small town, and the store is a big part of that town,” she said. “Working in the store made a big impression on me. You really got to see what people needed every day. Some days, people might not have a great day, and we were there for that. Or for the widower who would come in first thing in the morning every day to shop.”

That feeling of connectedness and care was a powerful force for Charity when deciding on her career path, and more to the point, on deciding to come back home to Vermont. “I’m sure some of my interest in politics comes from Vermont’s history of having a close proximity between government and the people,” she said. She remembers going to the Manchester Elementary School gym with her parents for Town Meeting, observing the mechanics of Vermont local government unfold while she did her homework, ate snacks, and ran around with other kids. “I had that sense that government was very close to me,” she said. “Because of that sense of comfort and enjoyment, I found myself working toward a political science degree, and ultimately choosing to work in government.”

Charity remembers meeting Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin when she was about nine years old. “She came to Manchester for Green Up Day,” she said. “I didn’t know until then that we had a woman governor and that it was unique.” Later, when Charity was in college and interning in Senator Leahy’s office, she ran into Kunin again at the 75th Anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. Charity bought Kunin’s autobiography and had her sign it at the event. The book is a treasured possession, proudly displayed on the bookshelf behind her during our Zoom call. Charity has never forgotten the impact those interactions with Kunin had on her career trajectory, simply showing her in fundamental ways what was possible.

Charity’s decision to run for Attorney General unfolded swiftly. Ten days after making the decision to run, she kicked off her campaign, and nine days after that, she submitted the 500 signatures necessary to get her name on the ballot. She is quick to thank her friends and colleagues for jumping in to help and gives her stepmother special credit. “My stepmother said, ‘I have great news. I got 40 signatures outside of Walmart. The bad news is, I don’t think I can go to Walmart again,’” Charity laughed. “They kicked her out! She also went to a festival where they had free Ben & Jerry’s, and she stood in the (ice cream) line and asked everyone to sign the petition.”

Charity said she immediately felt the weight of her historic win. “I took that (election win) incredibly seriously, and I try to identify opportunities for leadership in a space where a woman hadn’t previously been,” Charity said. “They say that women need to be asked multiple times to run for office, and also that women feel they need to have every possible qualification experience - I’m no exception,” she said. 

In her work as Attorney General, Charity has a front-row seat to the drafting of history. That idea of close proximity to government that Charity first felt at Manchester Town Meeting when she was young is why she is so comfortable protecting and advocating for Vermont’s citizens. “I’ve always loved Vermont so much. Do you know when you’re reading a book, and the setting is almost like a character? Vermont is a character in my story, and I’ve always felt a deep responsibility towards caring for it,” she said. “The Attorney General’s post is the perfect place to affect that care and responsibility.”  

Loving the state and its people means that you hurt when the community hurts, a notion brought into stark relief this July when quickly rising water damaged many areas of the state, including Montpelier and the Pavillion (building that houses the AG office). Charity was working outside of the office on Monday, July 10 when the news reports and photos came pouring in of the devastation happening downtown. “I love Montpelier so much - I worked there both before and after law school in the Pavillion building, and it’s just the best place,” she said. “I felt very helpless and upset when it first happened, but I quickly realized that the Attorney General’s office has a lane. We are so lucky to have lawyers embedded all over the state government who serve the Agency of Transportation for example, so we can support their work in fixing the roads.” 

In the days following the flood, Charity, like so many members of our local communities, pulled on her boots, bought some supplies and got to work doing the doing. She volunteered to help clean up the local toy store, alongside her neighbors. At the end of the day, she made sure that the owner was put in touch with the state’s small business advocate to ensure that they had the help they’d need to re-open. 

In her work over the past eight months as Attorney General, Charity has prioritized women and families of Vermont, addressing domestic violence, reproductive rights, and making workplaces accessible and friendly for new mothers, including the creation of designated lactation rooms. At the time of our conversation, the Attorney General’s office received the designation of breastfeeding-friendly employer, just in time for World Breastfeeding Week (August 1-7). Charity reflects on the history-making day of her election when Vermont voters also overwhelmingly decided to enshrine the right to abortion in the state’s Constitution. “Did you know that every single town voted to approve?” she asked. “Not one town voted against the Reproductive Liberty Amendment (Prop 5). Not one. Even the most conservative towns.” 

Recently, the Vermont Attorney General’s office has filed a suit against Monsanto for the manufacture and distribution of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) on behalf of Vermont’s environment and schools, the first state in the nation to file such a lawsuit. Vermont’s statewide school testing program is also the first in the country. In a July 7 commentary in Vermont Digger, Charity said, “Vermont taxpayers should not have to bear the full cost of cleaning up someone else’s mess.”

Throughout our conversation, we kept coming back to the idea that being the first woman carries the weight and responsibility of new representation. The value of compassion and the Culture of Care that Charity brings to her leadership is a differentiating factor so far for her tenure as Attorney General. This conversation has focused in large part on the tactics and strategy of serving as the chief law enforcement officer in the state, and, how just well-qualified she is to get the job done. 

Charity reflects back on the day that she delivered the requisite 500 signatures to become the first woman candidate for Vermont Attorney General ever on the Democratic ballot. The song she was blasting at full volume in the car was Brandi Carlile’s The Joke:

You get discouraged, don't you, girl?

It's your brother's world for a while longer

…

Call it living the dream, call it kicking the ladder

…

They come to kick dirt in your face

To call you weak and then displace you

After carrying your baby on your back across the desert

…

I have been to the movies, I've seen how it ends

And the joke's on them

“At that moment, to me, I had already won. The minute I got on the ballot, I had already won.”