Take The Lead is sharing your Power To Change Stories here, in our weekly newsletter, and in an upcoming ebook collection. Each week we highlight true, personal stories from around the world of how you are using your power to activate change. Together we can support each other in the mission to reach gender and racial parity in leadership across all sectors. Submit your stories here.
By Deborah Samuels. Bpeace is working with more than 100 small businesses this year and our goal is to help them grow and create thousands of new jobs so that families can feed their children, send them to school and hope for a brighter future. These businesses employ more than 5,000 people who in turn support 20,000 family members.
Read MoreBy Arlene Malinowski. I guarded the secret like it was a magician’s trick because crazy and unstable do not get to work at the Goodman Theater, do not get invited to fabulous parties, all that crazy and unstable get is judged. I understood the stigma of mental illness. I knew people would say, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. What do you have to be depressed about? Other people have it a lot worse.” I knew because I had said it myself.
Read MoreBy Aidee Granados. Embracing my cancer, and not only surviving it, opened a window to radically improve my well-being, the way I love and the reverence I have for life. An improvement that has not required money as the main input, but willpower and a firm belief in myself. How to share that willpower? How to make others believe they can decide for a better outcome? The answer: it’s not the fight that drains, but the love that heals and renews everything.
Read MoreBy Paula Cullison. When you surround yourself with positive thinking people, great things will happen. An expression of gratitude goes a long way. Remember that family and friends are the flowers in the garden of your life.
Read MoreBy Maureen Muldoon. I often wondered what life would be like if we saw God as a girl, a fierce and flawless female? I wondered when we would dismantle the mythology of a widowed God? In my mind it was simple; gender inequality rested on the dogma that God was only male. I never believed it.
Read MoreBy Kelli Grant. The Pursuit of Justice: Unconscious Bias training recognizes and addresses shame through activities highlighting disparities in clear ways and are interactive activities that highlight privilege and stereotyping. Addressing shame creates a space for education. The education component is focused on historical and present-day race issues, with focus on issues in the criminal justice system.
Read MoreBy Janine Galati- Naccarato. Exercise makes it possible for me to move my brain into stillness so that I am able to read, write and have access to my creativity. It’s an ongoing dialogue between brain and body that helps move me towards wholeness.
Read MoreBy Dr. Shika Jain, MD. Only by fixing systemic inequities will we begin the work necessary to heal a broken system. We must lift colleagues from diverse backgrounds with intentional opportunities. Just because this is the way it has “always been” in medicine, does not mean this is the way it must remain.
Read MoreBy April Terry. We created a read aloud program for mothers and grandmothers at our state's only women's correctional facility. Our project provided the women with read aloud tutoring sessions to increase their confidence and ability to read while providing an outlet to connect with their children and grandchildren.
Read MoreBy Ziwei Qi. In March 2020, along with Dr. Hsin-Yen Yang (Communication Studies), and Dr. Tamara Lynn (Criminal Justice), we started the Center for Empowering Victims of Gender-based Violence at Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS. We have been systematically examining various vocational rehabilitation programs and creating feasible career counsels and training sessions addressing the needs of IPV and
human trafficking survivors.
By Neisha Terry Young. In June a student sent me the following message: “You taught me that my voice is something that needs to be heard and something that can change the world if I really put my heart into it. Go show the world what you’ve got. Go change it!”
Read MoreBy Simone Ispa-Landa. Many years later, I will hear someone describe a basketball player who “plays with heart,” and I will think how much I admire that. My grandfather is gulping tea from a deep mug. I am 11. We are at the kitchen table. My grandfather is telling me about the time that his mother pushed him onto a train – a train that was leaving Leningrad - one of the very last trains to leave Leningrad before the Nazis reached the outskirts of the city.
By Jhmira Alexander. Conversations I’ve had with therapists, coaches and mentors have helped to shape my perspective allowing me to utilize my faith in an effort to influence and impact social change. Who once served from a broken heart out of a need to see the world differently, now leads from a restored place hopeful that my influence, access and willingness will somehow change the world around me while activating others to find and pursue their own life’s purpose.
By Deborah D. Douglas. The trick about the story of the Civil Rights Movement is we think that it was so long ago—at a time we can barely even imagine. But a lot of us on this earth now, we’re a part of that movement or have family members who were a part of it. And frankly, some our families may have opposed the movement, and we can grapple with that because it’s relevant right now.
By Monique Reed PhD RN. My purpose is to advocate for social justice and equity in nursing education and historically oppressed populations. I recognize that my educational privilege affords me the power to develop a cadre of nurses trained in equity and anti-racism to improve health outcomes in marginalized populations.
By Michelle Valiukenas. Knowing that I had to do something, I quit my job and dedicated myself to The Colette Louise Tisdahl Foundation, launched in September 2018. If I could not parent Colette in the way I had expected, I could parent her this way.
By Wrenetha Julion. As a Black professor and Department Chairperson in a predominantly white College of Nursing, I am inspired and proud to support students and faculty of color who, persevere and flourish despite questions about their intelligence and competence.
Read MoreBy Cimajie Best. Here I was being driven by my wound of American racism, while that had never even crossed this child’s mind. He was leading in the spirit of paying it forward, of giving back. He doesn’t know it but he shifted my entire perspective that day.
Read MoreBy Dr. Rosalind Ramsey-Goldman. Community leaders work with a playbook that allows them to describe key components of trials and encourages sharing personal experiences that inform healthcare decisions.
Read MoreBy Bora Laci. We live in a world where you must look a certain way to be identified as an immigrant and that is not true. We all have our own story, and we should all be able to share it.
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