Former Congresswoman Patricia Scott Schroeder is president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the national trade organization of the U.S. book publishing industry, a post she assumed on June 1, 1997. Schroeder left Congress undefeated in 1996 after representing Colorado’s First Congressional District (Denver) in the United States House of Representatives for twenty-four years.

From January to June 1997, she held the rank of professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. In addition to heading the AAP, Schroeder also serves on the Marguerite Casey Foundation Board of Directors, the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights Executive Committee, and is the Chair of the Council for a Livable World’s PeacePAC. She also serves on various advisory committees dealing with literacy and issues affecting children and women.

Born in Portland, Oregon in 1940, Schroeder graduated magna cum laude in 1961 from the University of Minnesota. She went on to Harvard Law School, where she was one of only fifteen women in a class of more than five hundred men. She earned her JD in 1964 and moved to Denver, CO, with her husband, James, who in 1972 encouraged her to challenge an incumbent Republican for the House seat representing Colorado's First Congressional District.

The mother of two young children at the time she was elected to the House, Schroeder went on to serve twelve terms. During her tenure in the House, she became the dean of Congressional Women, co-chaired the Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues for ten years, and served on the House Judiciary Committee, the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, and was the first woman to serve on the House Armed Services Committee. As chair of the House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families from 1991 to 1993, Schroeder guided the Family and Medical Leave Act and the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act to enactment in 1993. She was also active on many military issues, expediting the National Security Committee's vote to allow women to fly combat missions in 1991 and working to improve the situation of military families through passage of her Military Family Act in 1985.

In Congress, Schroeder was a leader in the cause of education and a champion of free speech, and was a ranking member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property.

Schroeder is the author of two books:  Champion of the Great American Family (Random House 1989) and 24 Years of House Work...and the Place Is Still a Mess (Andrews McMeel 1998). She is in the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.