Following the wave of #MeToo stories that overwhelmed social media last month, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, who represents California’s 14th district, which houses around half of Sequoia’s student population, shared her own #MeToo story and started the corresponding hashtag, #MeTooCongress, to encourage others in politics to share their own stories.

As a 23-year-old congressional staffer, the Chief of Staff grabbed and forcibly kissed her. Afterwards, she made sure that she was never again in a situation where he could do something similar, and that worked fairly well.

“I shared it mostly because, when it happened to me, sexual harassment wasn’t even identified, it hadn’t been named and we hadn’t established that it was illegal. I told the story so that women on Capitol Hill would feel comfortable coming to me and talking to me about it,“ Speier said in a phone interview.

While her experience as a congressional staffer didn’t largely affect her future career, she still thinks that this behavior is unacceptable and should not ever occur.

“It didn’t really [affect my career] because, if you talk to most women my age who have been in the workforce, they have a me too. story,” Speier said. “It was commonplace back then, and there was no law prohibiting it. Once it became illegal conduct, then it should have stopped, but it didn’t.”

Since sharing her own story in a YouTube video, women across the country and especially within Capitol Hill have been sharing their own stories and experiences with her. Meanwhile, others have been prompted to publicly share their own stories, including Los Angeles newscaster Leeann Tweeden, who was the first to accuse Senator Al Franken (D- Minnesota) of sexual assault.

“I was in Carmel this past weekend, and I had a 75-year-old woman come up to me and tell me how grateful she was,” Speier said. “It really touches women in all walks of life and in all spaces of life.”

She is now the co-sponsoring the Me Too Congress Act, officially called the Member and Employee Training and Oversight On Congress Act, with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), which would alter the way that harassment is reported in Congress, make it easier and faster to file complaints, and eliminate the requirement that complainants sign nondisclosure agreements. The legislation now has 110 co-sponsors, and she expects that the bill will be out of committee by the middle or end of Jan. She also introduced a piece of legislation which would require mandatory sexual harassment training for everyone in the Capitol, which passed with bipartisan support.

“I’ve been working this issue for a really long time. When the me too. campaign started, I thought this is a great opportunity to take advantage of the moment,” Speier said.

Outside of these bills, she has throughout her entire career championed women’s rights helping carry and introduce bills on sexual assault on college campuses and in the military, child support, equal pay for equal work and reproductive health.

“When I first got elected to the state assembly, my campaign manager said that I needed to get involved in other issues,” Speier said. “I attempted to do that for a little bit, but then I realized, ‘If I didn’t take on these issues, who would?’”