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Lois Romano didnt set out to become a journalist.
She was 22, a recent Emmanuel graduate, and looking for part-time work when she answered a classified ad for a reporting job at a small Capitol Hill newspaper, Roll Call. Within days, she was calling members of Congress directlyand getting invited in.
One assignment, tied to Women History Month, led her to interview a slate of prominent female lawmakers. What happened next would launch her career.
When Romano inquired about interviewing , her staff told her she could catch her at the airportand suggested she pick her up. So she did, enlisting a friend to take notes while she drove.
Im driving and asking her questions, and she saying, Youe going to get us killed, Romano recalled. My friend in the backseat taking notesbadlyand Im just trying to keep up.
She wrote two stories: one from her reporting, and one from that chaotic car ride. When she handed them in, her editor looked at her and asked, Did this really happen?
It had. And it got her the job.
Reporting on Powerand the People Behind It
That instinctto look beyond the surface of power and into the people behind itwould define Romano career. Over the course of decades at The Washington Post and Politico, she covered seven presidential campaigns and profiled figures including Jesse Jackson, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
Some of the most meaningful moments, she said, came from being close to history as it unfolded.
An exhilarating story for me was traveling with Jesse Jackson through Georgia when he was running for president, Romano said. He drew enormous crowdswe were going through back roads, into minority neighborhoods and affluent neighborhoods. It was very poignant.
Decades later, she saw that story come full circle. When Obama emerged as a national figure, Romano watched as Jacksononce a pioneering presidential candidatestood in the crowd, visibly moved.
To see him standing there, with tears running down his face, you just knew you were watching this incredible moment, she said.
I dont believe that covering politicians is just about the news, she added. It about characterwho they are, where they came from, what shaped them.
Her years in the ʴDz Style section helped refine that approach. Writing long-form profiles, she learned to move beyond headlines and into the deeper terrain of personality and motivation.
The reporting came naturally to me, but I taught myself how to write,she said. Reading biographies, reading fiction, figuring out how to organize a storyand to communicate the core of who someone is.
Reconsidering Mary Todd Lincoln
That same lens now shapes her first book,
For Romano, Mary Todd Lincoln is not simply misunderstoodshe is misrepresented. But more than that, she is resilient.
When I think about her, I think about resiliency, Romano said. You cant measure if somebody resilient in real time. But you can look back on their lifeand her resiliency is staggering.
Todd Lincoln life was marked by extraordinary loss: the deaths of three of her four sons, the assassination of her husband, financial strain, and a forced institutionalization initiated by her surviving son. She lived with anxiety and profound grief, all under relentless public scrutiny.
And yet, Romano found, those realities were often portrayed with little empathy.Her early story was written by men who didnt understand her, and who didn't like her, Romano said. And once that narrative takes hold, it very hard to undo.
Who Gets to Tell the Story
Revisiting Todd Lincoln life also raised a broader questionone that extends well beyond the 19th century.
For generations, the stories of powerful women have often been shaped by those outside their experience, flattening complexity into caricature. Only more recently have historians begun to revisit those narratives with greater context and nuance.
Romano sees echoes of that pattern today.
Women in public life, she noted, continue to be judged not only for their actions, but for how those actions are interpretedhow ambition, emotion, and public presence are framed.
Figures such as Hillary Clinton have similarly been defined by narratives that often say as much about cultural expectations as they do about the individual.
Foundations at Emmanuel
Romano interest in politicsand in the forces that shape public perceptioncan be traced back to her time at 51.
A sociology and political science major, she was deeply influenced by Sister Marie Augusta Neal, SNDdeN, a formidable faculty member known for her commitment to social justice and experiential learning.
She was a force of nature, Romano said. Tough as nails, incredibly well-read, and completely committed to the idea that you had to engage with the world.
Emmanuel, she said, may not have set her on a path to journalismbut it nurtured something just as essential: a love of politics, and a commitment to understanding the world more deeply.
Romano career, she said, was driven less by planning than by instinctand by an enduring curiosity about people.
I loved the variety of it. Im a very curious person, she said. I loved figuring out what drives people.
That curiosity carried her across decades of political reportingand across generations of public life.
The people I met early on all of a sudden, 35 years later, theye in Obama White House, she said.
Now, reflecting on that path, the throughline is clear.
I didnt plan this, she said. But I followed what interested me.
It the same perspective that now shapes her work as an authorreexamining the lives of women like Mary Todd Lincoln, and asking not just what happened, but how their stories have been told.