Ernestine Bradley

Ernestine Bradley is a woman of many talents and many distinct lives. She is a cancer survivor, author, professor, mother and the wife of former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, she had literally never been sick a day in her life. Suddenly, illness forced her to reevaluate everything she had always taken for granted about her life. Ernestine thinks that cancer has brought her gifts which allowed her to find deeper meaning in her own life and a greater understanding of our collective existence.

In her memoir, The Way Home, she movingly describes how having cancer widens your horizons and makes you want to celebrate the everyday aspects of life that are so often overlooked. In her presentations, Ernestine shares with audiences how facing your own mortality gives you insights into life and death in a way that people so often avoid because the insights seem too stark and too threatening. She focuses on the enrichment cancer can bring to you, if you have the courage to open up to giving and receiving love. She also stresses the fact that cancer affects not only the individual, but also partners and families who need support in order to give support. When you hear her speak, you will never think about cancer the same way again. The power of her message leaves audiences alternately crying, laughing and ultimately, inspired.

Ernestine is an independent woman with insightful reflections on the role of women in the 21st century. As a working mother who commuted between New Jersey, where she taught as a professor and Washington, DC, where her husband served in the US Senate, she knows a lot about the difficulties and frustrations of leading multiple lives simultaneously. When she addresses these issues, she finds much resonance among other working mothers and wives. As a world traveler who speaks four languages and as the wife who stood by her husbands side in the 2000 Democratic presidential primaries, she draws on a wealth of unique experiences that inspire and inform an audience.

As a college professor for more than thirty years, Ernestine is an expert on the legacy of the Holocaust in German literature and what it means for our time. She speaks of her own personal journey to come to terms with the unspeakable horror perpetrated in her native land and she reflects on the rise of Nazism and how the Holocaust could have happened. In gripping detail, she explains what it was like to be a child who grew up under an authoritarian regime that invaded every aspect of life and then, what it was like as a person in a defeated nation just to survive the immediate postwar period.

Ernestine Bradley has spoken for a wide array of audiences including universities, womens groups, cancer and healthcare organizations to name just a few. Her presentations are sure to inspire and engage any audience.