A Call to Lead
Like many transfer students to UMass Boston, Janet Trafton Mills ’70, Maine’s first female governor, took the circuitous route to a degree. She enrolled at Colby College after graduating high school in 1965, but dropped out in her sophomore year, eager to explore the world beyond her home state. With the Vietnam War raging overseas and U.S. cities erupting in protest over the war and civil rights, Mills felt confined at the small, rural college in Waterville, whose culture then centered on football and fraternities, she said.
“I wasn’t focused on studying,” she recalled. “Things were happening outside Maine, and I felt a call to action.”
So Mills did what thousands of restless, idealistic youth did in 1967: she moved to San Francisco, just in time for the Summer of Love.
Though Mills didn’t consider herself part of the antiwar movement, she opposed the conflict and participated in some protests there. She also absorbed San Francisco’s hippie counterculture, which was, as she wryly put it, “quite different from Waterville or Farmington, Maine,” where she grew up.
But after a year and a half of bouncing between jobs as a waitress, office worker, and psychiatric aide, she decided to give college another try. By then, she had moved back east and was living just blocks from UMass Boston. A friend who attended the college suggested she enroll, and she did, in the fall of 1968.
“I realized that school isn’t a bad thing,” Mills said. “I now saw its value.”
This time, she took her studies seriously, earning mostly As. She dabbled in topics ranging from Shakespeare to Greek, grasped math “for the first time ever,” and honed analytical skills that have helped her succeed in law and public service, she said.
Looking back, Mills said the courses she took at UMass Boston, and the professors who taught them, “had a significant impact on my willingness and desire to do well at school.”
The highlight of her undergraduate education was taking part in the college’s first study abroad trip to France, led by Frederick Busi, a professor emeritus of French and Italian studies. Living abroad and being immersed in another culture “helped open my eyes to the wider world,” Mills said.
From UMass Boston to the Governor's Mansion
Upon graduating from UMass Boston with a bachelor’s degree in French in 1970, Mills took an office job in Washington, DC, and moved in with a smart, handsome, charming man with alcoholism. She left him when he threatened her with a gun—but the experience, and her later observations of how the criminal justice system fails victims of domestic violence, would motivate Mills to co-found in 1978 the Maine Women’s Lobby to advocate for battered and abused women.
After leaving the relationship, Mills returned to Maine for law school in 1973. At the time, there were few women in the legal profession, and she recalls feeling intimidated.
Yet Mills thrived in law school, entering public service as an assistant attorney general not long after graduating. Four years later, she became the first female district attorney in New England. In 1985, she married Stanley Kuklinski, a widower with five young daughters whom she would help raise. He died following a stroke in 2014.
Mills won a seat in the Maine House of Representatives in 2002 and was elected Attorney General of Maine in 2008—the first, and only, woman to ever hold that office. A decade later, voters picked her over a Republican business executive to be the 75th Governor of Maine. In 2022, Mills defeated her Republican challenger and longtime antagonist, former Governor Paul LePage, to win a second term in office.
During her six years in office, Mills has signed executive orders and bills that have expanded access to health care and affordable housing, modernized Maine’s aging infrastructure, and increased spending on K–12 education. She has worked with the legislature to diversify Maine’s economy, attract and integrate new workers, tackle the state’s opioid crisis, and strengthen relations with the state’s Native peoples.
Under her leadership, Maine has led New England in economic growth. The state emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic with one of the lowest death rates and highest vaccination rates in the country. To help high school graduates whose education was disrupted by the pandemic get back on track, she proposed—and the legislature funded—one of the nation’s first free community college programs, now in its third year.
Knocking Heads a Bit
Along the way, Mills has developed a reputation as a pragmatic problem-solver, a leader who listens to all sides and tries to build consensus. “I tend to have everybody in the room at the same time—and that includes for issues on which people vehemently disagree,” she said.
“I’d rather have people in the same room talking together and knocking heads a bit.” It’s an approach Mills has taken in her effort to bring the nation’s first floating offshore wind research site to Maine, a state with consistently high winds and miles of coastline.
In public forums and private meetings on the project, Mills has heard from business leaders and environmentalists who view it as a historic opportunity to grow jobs and end the state’s reliance on fossil fuels, and also from lobstermen, concerned about impacts on Maine’s iconic fishing industry. In an effort to satisfy both sides, she signed into law legislation that prohibits offshore wind projects in state waters, which extend three miles offshore, but permits them further out, in federal waters.
“There’s always a fear of the unknown, of change,” Mills says. “We’re trying to overcome it by involving as many people from diverse sectors as possible.”
That doesn’t mean her decisions have always been popular, of course. Maine lobstermen, already feeling threatened by climate change and federal regulation, continue to raise concerns about the plan to place wind turbines roughly 30 miles offshore, saying they shouldn’t have to “co-exist” with the technology. Some environmentalists have objected to the state’s plan to build and assemble the turbines on Sears Island, two-thirds of which is held in a permanent conservation easement.
Looking ahead, Mills sees climate change as the biggest challenge confronting her state. Already, warming temperatures are causing tick populations to explode and mosquito- borne illnesses to migrate northward. Last winter, the state saw some of the most devastating storms in its history, with extreme high tides that swamped docks and wharves and washed out bridges and culverts.
“We know that’s not the end of it,” she said. “The worst is yet to come.” In an effort to curb climate change, while also preparing for its inevitable impacts, Mills has promoted cleaner energy sources — including wind, solar, and heat pumps — and sent millions in grant money to cities and towns to help them get ready for flooding, rising sea levels, and extreme storms. Five years ago, she spoke to the United Nations General Assembly, urging world leaders to take action, and telling them Maine Won’t Wait—the name of the state’s four-year climate plan.
But reducing the state’s dependence on oil hasn’t been easy. Maine has one of the oldest housing stocks in the nation, and half the population uses oil to heat their homes. “There’s a lot of money going out of state to big oil that could benefit Maine families,” Mills lamented.
Advice for Today's Beacons
Now 76 and approaching the final two years of her second term, Mills seems surprised by where she’s ended up, 57 years after she dropped out of college. Growing up, she thought she might become a teacher, like her mother, or maybe a writer. But she never imagined herself as a lawyer or politician, she said. Still, Mills had at least one powerful female role model in U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a family friend who lived just up the road from where she grew up. From Smith, a Republican who stood up to Senator Joseph McCarthy when no one else in her party would, she learned the importance of staying firm under political pressure — and remaining civil in the process. “She was vilified, but she was right, and she stood her ground,” Mills said. “And she was always civil.”
Asked what advice she’d give to college students considering a career in public service, Mills said she’d tell them to pay attention, read a lot, and “use words wisely.”
“Words can be the bearer of sorrow, hate, violence or love,” she said. “If you pick your words wisely and say exactly what you mean, you’ll have a greater effect on others, and a greater effect on society.”
And don’t wait to try to make your mark on the world, she adds. “Think about the Nike slogan,” she said. “If you wait too long, you lose the effect. Just do it.” Oh, and “take your studies seriously.” “I didn’t, my first year,” she said “UMassBoston helped me come around.”