Jana is an acclaimed Arizona journalist, author and speaker. She has been honored with two lifetime achievement awards as “an inspiration to the state’s media community.”

Yes, its’ true.

Jana Bommersbach and Bob Boze Bell have spent the last three years collaborating on a sweeping book about the HELLRAISING AND TRAILBLAZING women too often overlooked in Western history–smart women, gutsy women, fearless women, stubborn women, inspiring women.

“Bommersbach and Bell tell stories to intrigue and entice, giving readers
curated pieces of women’s history in an enthusiastic mosaic.“
Los Angeles Review of Books, February 27, 2023

PURCHASE HELLRAISERS & TRAILBLAZERS

UPCOMING APPEARANCES:

* April 27: Scottsdale Museum of the West, 3930 N. Marchall Way, Scottsdale. Jana and Bob appear together at 2 p.m.

My first podcast trailer!!! They put a microphone in front of me and let me tell in 8 episodes what it took me 495 pages to tell in my book:
A STOLEN LIFE, THE DEBRA MILKE STORY.
This is one of America’s most astonishing criminal cases.

            Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame

Frances Willard Munds

LET’S TOP A 108 YEAR-OLD RECORD

I’m aiming for 95 percent.
I want to break the record that Arizona’s suffragettes so bragged about in 1912, when their initiative to grant women the vote passed overwhelmingly in the first election of the new, 48th State.
Frances Willard Munds, who led the state to voting victory, proudly reported to Eastern suffragettes that Arizona had quickly registered 90 percent of its eligible women voters—while all the women east of the Mississippi still had eight years to wait before the 19th Amendment granted them the vote in 1920.
You can just imagine how proud Mrs. Munds was to write that letter!
Before we get too full of ourselves, it must be noted that this meant 90 percent of the white women of Arizona. Native women weren’t even considered citizens yet (not until 1924) and wouldn’t earn the right to vote until the state Supreme Court forced Arizona in 1948. Mexican American women (and men) had to pass an English test to vote, and those tactics—including polling taxes and literacy tests used against all minorities—weren’t outlawed until 1972.
But back in 1912, it was an incredible milestone for Frances to lay claim to such success. She brought Arizona into the glory of the western states, which led the nation in female voting. Wyoming women had been voting since 1869—50 years before the 19th Amendment. By the time Arizona joined the chorus, women also had full voting rights in Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Washington and California. The same day Arizona voted, so did Oregon and Kansas.
Winning the vote wasn’t Frances’ only bragging right. Votes-for-women efforts had been kicked in the teeth six times since Arizona became a territory in 1862, so she could glorify in the results of the election on November 5, 1912—nine months after Arizona became a state on February 14. A total of 68 percent of the men of Arizona voted for suffrage—passing it in every one of the 14 counties, with votes ranging from 81 percent in Graham County to 55 percent in Greenlee. It was the largest win ever recorded in the nation for female suffrage.
And don’t forget Arizona’s third bragging right when it comes to suffrage. On Feb. 14, 1920, Arizona became the 31st state to ratify the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, also known as the 19th Amendment. While in most states, the debate over universal suffrage was contentious, Arizona stands almost alone in having passed it in one day, without debate, with laughter over out-of-state objections, and without a single dissenting vote.
So in 2020, I’m aiming to best our Fore-Mothers and get 95 percent registration of Arizona women.
But boy, these days, do we have a long way to go.
Today, Arizona women have one of the nation’s lowest voter registrations and our turnout on election day is nothing to brag about.
Nationally, 72 percent of women are registered to vote, but only 58 percent voted in the last presidential election of 2016.
In Arizona, 62 percent of women are registered but only 56 percent voted four years ago.
We do outvote men—in Arizona, 58 percent of men are registered and 50 percent voted in 2016.
But considering how hard Arizona pioneer women worked to earn the vote, we certainly should be out-voting men, and by much more than a measly 6 percent.
We have a long, long way to go to get to my 95 percent goal.
But the least we can do, in this 100th anniversary of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, is to try.

 Inspirational  Keynote Speaker, Journalist and Author

SEX TRAFFICKING  WESTERN WOMEN   ARIZONA POLITICS

Jana Bommersbach is one of Arizona’s most acclaimed journalists. The Arizona Press Club honored her lifetime of achievement with its highest honor–The Distinguished Service Award. The Society of Professional Journalists inducted her into the ORDER OF THE SILVER KEY as an “inspiration to the state’s media community.” She has been Arizona Journalist of the Year and twice was recognized as the nation’s top city magazine columnist. Jana is also a communications expert who has won accolades in every phase of her career: journalist, author, broadcaster and speaker.

Sex Trafficking
Jana’s two-year investigation into the world of sex trafficking for her book, thedeadgirlinthevacantlot, left her horrified. The FBI says 100,000 children a year are being sold as sex slaves the the United States of America. Congress says most of them were being sold on an internet site called Backpage.com. The compelling book takes readers inside this world in a very personal way – through teenagers forced into sex slavery; through a tenacious female reporter determined to save them, and through the men who sell them. Jana tells how it all came together – and what’s happening in the real world in real time – in a speech that informs, enlightens and awakens audiences to a problem most don’t even realize is in their own backyard.

Western Women
Women are invisible in western history—their incredible accomplishments buried. History gorges itself on gunfighters and goons, but stays silent on heroic and hell-raising women. So Jana opened her mouth to tell their stories. North America’s first professional female athletes came out of the west; the first female politicians in the nation came out of the west; the first women with full voting rights came from the west—decades before the 19th Amendment. It’s time history was corrected and Jana’s the one to do it!

Arizona Politics
It’s almost a miracle that Arizona was admitted to the Union. Nobody wanted her. It wasn’t until February 14, 1912—50 years after Arizona was named a Territory—that she became the 48th and last contiguous state. There were some good reasons for that anguish and some disgusting excuses, just as today’s politics befuddle and disgust America time and again. Jana has covered Arizona politics for almost five decades, and has studied its earliest history to try and understand this wild and wicked place.