Hello.

I'm Pam Toder, President of Women of Achievement.

Thank you for joining us for this special presentation of our 67th Women of Achievement Honorees.

You're about to meet ten extraordinary women volunteer leaders who saw crucial needs in St. Louis and found ways to make a difference.

Volunteers are the backbone of our community, and often their dedication and contributions go unnoticed.

The Woman of Achievement Award, which was founded in 1955, is the oldest, ongoing program in the area to recognize women volunteer leaders.

It's an honor for us and our sponsors and supporters to recognize these ten exceptional women and the lives, organizations, and causes they have impacted.

It is my pleasure to introduce the 2022 Women of Achievement.

I'm an urban planner.

Very close to retirement, my husband died, and I was left with a 16-year-old to raise.

I was looking for something to do.

Decided to check out Vista again, became a Vista member.

Had the opportunity to go to the St Louis Association of Community Organizations and to to work on community development programs.

I've been there ever since.

Judith is genuinely motivated about doing good for other people, so she really wants to improve communities and neighborhoods, whatever they may be, however, they may be.

I got to the Greenway because they were holding an open house and wanted to show the community the connectivity of the greenways and how they worked all around the metropolitan area.

And I just happened to see the Hodiamont Tracks on the big map.

Because urban planners, we love maps.

We're always mapping something.

So for me to look at this map and see the Hodiamont Tracks just north of Delmar and no investment being made.

It was meant for me.

It was meant for me to do.

This was a 3.5 mile vacant corridor that the old streetcar used to run on.

It became abandoned and desolate.

So many times, there is a preconceived notion of what an area is like.

I mean, you see it in the media all the time where there's a focus on areas that are north of Delmar and people don't want to go there and they don't want to invest there.

But when you have 65 people, because I had a large bus.

Sixty-five people on a bus, and you're showing them what is actually changing in the area and how they can be a part, you see the investment happen.

She's a pragmatic planner because she sees that in the area north of Delmar, the obvious thing to address before anything else is vacant property and how that came to be and how it can be remedied.

These neighborhoods can bounce back and be strong with good community leadership, an infusion of capital, public and private.

And that is what is happening now.

I was a survivor of abuse from a relationship over 30 years ago.

Didn't come from that type of household.

My family, wasn't in that type of family.

And so when this happened, first I was embarrassed and I was afraid and I didn't know who to talk to or even what to share.

And so when I finally got out of the situation, I said, I don't want the next person to have to go through what I went through.

JADASA is an acronym.

It stands for Journey Against Domestic and Sexual Abuse.

And we work with women who are in an abusive relationship or come from those backgrounds or at-risk in their families.

And we empower, educate, and we encourage.

Once they get out of that situation, they can do it.

And Cynthia has worked since 2002 doing this.

And her transparency is, I think, key to these women, because when she's riding with them or taking them somewhere, she tells her story.

I understand the psyche of an abuse survivor and it's always a why.

Why did this happen to me?

Why?

Why am I going through this?

So now I switch it.

Why not me?

To do something positive, to make a change in someone's life?

Why not me?

Her commitment and dedication to these women really does make them feel good, that they don't feel like they're abandoned.

We also do the developHer program and we tackle another part of abuse, financial abuse.

And so we want the girls to know that you can be self-sufficient.

You can learn this.

It's a basic program to introduce them to coding, mobile app development, and talk about entrepreneurship.

You can be your own boss.

It's so great when you hear that a woman has moved on and opened her own business, or now she's working and empowering her own self to do things like that.

It's the success stories, it's everything to us.

I absolutely love this.

This is volunteer work.

But I love it.

It's not work because I love it.

And I like to make a difference.

I like to see that spark that was dimmed from abuse and neglect, and the person that has that hopelessness in their eyes.

I like to see that flicker of light.

That does something to me.

I love art and I love people.

So if I put the two together, it makes for a perfect world.

I am a two-time cancer survivor, and I have an understanding of what it feels like.

So going through all of that and going through chemotherapy and understanding how to say thank you to people when they want to help and receiving from people and realizing that it felt good, I learned a lot.

And the other thing that I did was with my art, I stayed completely involved with it and I saw what it did.

And it got me out of myself and into what I was working on, which was the art.

I worked at Washington University School of Medicine and ran the art department.

I was approached during that time period to see if, personally, would I be interested in taking on a project.

What would happen if we bring the cancer patient and art together?

How would it go?

And it's magical.

Well, she started Arts as Healing while she was at Siteman, and they gave us the facilities and some help.

But in 2013, she formed Arts as Healing as a separate 501c3 and she has built it from that point to the point where we go into hospitals, into chemotherapy infusion centers and bedside, and we have our own studio.

When someone's going through a difficult illness, a significant one, something that will be chronic.

When you bring art into that picture, what happens is all of a sudden the stress level goes down, the creative level goes up, and when creativity goes up, you have a sense of well-being.

And Vicki is amazing as she reaches out to everyone and she knows what they're going through.

So she meets them exactly where they are.

And she is joyous and she laughs.

And she is a wonderful art teacher.

We better do our best so that we can make that difference.

So people heal.

We want them to heal.

We want them to feel good in general, about themselves, and possibly with a new hobby.

I am an engineer, and we solve problems.

And we like to solve problems by digging into root cause.

So early on in my volunteer career, one of my experiences was cooking at a homeless shelter.

So, of course, the engineer says why are these people homeless?

Well, that led to answering a domestic violence crisis line, that led to serving on the boards at Alive and Safe Connections.

So Peggy does so many different kinds of volunteer work from board work to in the trenches.

There's so many things that she's doing that it's a little hard to pin down on what she does.

But how I would characterize it is her incredible positive energy and her enthusiasm and passion come through.

They shine through each of those activities.

We have been very, very fortunate to have been helped by lots of people in our careers and in our lives.

And so we are able to to help where we can.

Peggy was an engineer at Boeing for 30 years, and that comes through in what she's able to do as a volunteer.

She's looking for how to put things together, how to fix things, how to build those connections.

Most recently, I've been working with Saint Louis Public Radio.

The board decided they wanted to initiate a series of community engagement events, and we were planning on a one evening event with five local theater companies to talk about the things that theaters do other than performing.

She put her brain on that and started talking with partners and people in the theater.

And one thing led to another.

And this amazing idea was conceived that she came up with the Grand Center Theater Crawl.

It started in 2013.

That event with five companies drew 300 people and over the next five years grew to over 3000 people over a weekend in Grand Center with over 30 professional theater companies.

I don't even know how that's possible because that's a lot of herding to be done there.

And to put that all together, and then gather the volunteers, find venues.

It's just a huge undertaking.

It's a pub crawl for live theater and no one else in the country is doing it.

And that's a level that you just don't see for many volunteers who can really see that vision, but then say, yep, I can do that.

And to go out and get it done and then let it grow.

COPE24 was formed.

COPE24 stands for Changing Our Parenting Experience, 24 as in 24 hours a day.

And we were formed to work specifically with high school students.

After spending six years in our high schools, speaking in those classes, working with family and consumer science teachers, and what I saw as a missing piece was anything that was reality-based.

And so I wanted students to understand this is what it's really like when you're the parent.

Because more than 80% of us are going to be parents.

And it's the hardest job that there is.

This was no way on my radar, but we had two children land on our doorstep, not just one Christmas Eve, but two different Christmas Eve nights is when they showed up.

During the next four years, we will foster these kids on and off three different times.

And then I will become more upset with the system as I learn about the system.

It's just overwhelmed.

That's the biggest part of the problem, that maybe this system we have in place would be awesome if it didn't have the volume, and the need.

So many kids, so many families.

What do you do about that?

So that's what COPE24 does.

We are focusing on the future, and we create these documentary-style videos, and the curriculum that goes with it for what are known as Family and Consumer Science teachers or FACTS teachers.

So they already teach those classes and we're sort of bringing reality into the classroom.

I think Rene is just a phenomenal person who comes with a passion, and you need passion in this world, and in this role.

I feel like since really what I'm doing is child advocacy to reduce child abuse and neglect, education is the answer.

And somehow we've got to make this more of a priority, make our family stronger, our parenting stronger, and that will affect more than just child abuse and neglect.

It will affect our drug problem and our mental health problem and our domestic violence problem.

She wants to make a difference, whether it be one child or a hundred children.

She wants to make that difference.

And I think she does every day.

Secondary only to the core subjects should be family education.

If we want to make our nation healthier, and I think we're making strides towards that, that's what makes me most proud.

My focus is really humanity, just people, because people need what people need.

The St. Louis Skate Crew is the first organization that we really put together along with Rollin' for Backstoppers and then the Ethical Society of Police.

I've been on the department for 33 years, and our mission is to make sure that we make good relationships between the police and the community.

Cheryl is the founder of several different organizations, mostly related to Backstoppers in increasing the awareness in the community.

Well, when we began Rollin' for Backstoppers, it was established in 2010, and it was really birthed out of our skate crew, STL Finest Skate Crew.

And the purpose of it was to really bring awareness, the mission, the purpose of Backstoppers, to the African-American community, as well as other minority communities.

And the reason why we call it a Rollin' for Backstoppers was because all first responders serve their communities on wheels.

And her mother told me that there was one thing about Cheryl that was noted very early, and that is when there was some kind of commotion or noise in the community, when everybody else would run away from that, Cheryl would run toward it.

There are men and women that go out every day and put their lives on the line and pay the ultimate sacrifice.

And we as a community need to really help that family, those children, their spouses left behind.

And just the fact that the community will stand by and support those families when their loved one is no longer there to support the family is a huge thing.

She's a niece of humanity.

She calls a lot of people she helped aunt and uncle, those who receive more than just the one time assistance.

Service, service, service.

I guess that can be my middle name is service.

And that's the purpose of what I do all through all these different organizations.

If I can do it, I'm going to do it.

My sister, Karen, found out she had a brain tumor on her pituitary, and the surgery went well, but she had a stroke, and with that, she lost her job.

And we had to figure out how we're going to get her into health care.

A sorority member of mine happened to work at Family Care and said, bring her here.

And so she had a great team of doctors who worked with the specialists.

And she wound up volunteering because volunteerism is part of our core mission for our family.

Then I was approached to become a member of the board.

Family Care Health Centers is a federally qualified health center in South St. Louis.

We serve people regardless of their insurance status.

We have pediatrics, family medicine, pharmacy, dental and just added chiropractic services to help with pain management.

We were able to expand our services under my tenure as president, started our residency and things like that.

And so my sister got to see the beginnings of that.

People listen to her when she speaks, and I think that's because she's energetic.

She's compassionate.

She's an expert in community health centers because she spent so much time volunteering.

The proudest thing is having four sites now, having a headquarters that will see people no matter what.

She has the best interest of the patients at heart.

And so when you have that kind of momentum, good things happen.

She wanted me to continue and to do more work with Family Care Health Centers.

And from that, I've been involved both on the state level with the Missouri Primary Care Association and on the national level.

I've served on five different committees.

When I go to D.C. or go anywhere and talk about health centers, I can hear Karen go, "Alright, you're doing it.

You're doing it."

And it's all okay.

Wherever there is a need, I am there.

The calling came to me when I had my children.

As a physician, I was always healing the physical element.

When my child, through my child, when he cried, something stirred in me.

I wanted to take away the fear.

I felt that I need to reach.

I need to give.

I need to care for the soul.

Sunitha is very driven for excellence, and I think that for her she sees that she has been blessed with skills and the ability to use her talents in the world.

And she sees that if she can help others fulfill that desire, she will make it a better place and she knows she wants to make that happen for other people.

I initially started with a youth community, which is Bal Vihar.

I wanted to instill and foster the drive and the determination and give them the resilience to take on any challenge and instill in those young minds to see beyond the race, the color, the religion, and embrace the diversity.

Sunitha has made contributions to other international women in St. Louis through the St. Louis Mosaic Project.

She's been a mentor and an inspiration to a lot of other international women.

The need to find a place for themselves that is where the mentor comes in to help them getting a place within their community as well as knowing St. Louis.

Finding the job opportunities and finding their own religious community.

It is not one cause I am for.

Wherever the problem comes in.

I want to identify it.

I want to take it on.

And we as a community can work towards the cause.

Our daughter, Annie, she's 19 now.

So when she was born, we were handed this little girl with down syndrome and didn't really understand it.

So when she was around four or so, it was pretty easy to see that there was a gap academically.

I'm a hospital administrator, I'm not an educator, so I had no clue.

How do you teach someone to read, let alone someone with down syndrome?

And I found a woman in California who had taken all of this information, and she had developed this thing called The Learning Program.

We brought it to St. Louis with a pilot project.

I got 12 families together and I said, let's try this, let's see if these kids will learn how to read.

And within like two months, these kids were reading.

They were reading sight words and they were understanding, if I read the word dog, this is what it is.

And it was it was really exciting.

And so that's the point where my husband said, you know, we can't really keep this to ourselves.

Julie has accomplished more than anyone I know for people with down syndrome and their families.

Julie didn't just make that for her child.

She wanted everyone to benefit from what she was learning was helping Annie.

And so what started out as this little group became many groups and many classes.

We then started The Maren Fund, which is Annie's middle name.

We also have our other classes, our Grad Group and Club 21, which is a wonderful cooking class, and our College Life that we're starting, and we have tutoring, and a bunch of other-we have up to like 15 programs now.

We have wonderful teachers that help us in our classrooms and volunteers.

We just have this huge thing that's developed and so it's been really wonderful.

We all have special challenges in our lives.

And Julie, like every leader, sees those special challenges and then turns it into an opportunity.

Every child that has gone through this has learned how to read.

She's not only changed these children's lives, she's changed the trajectory for every one of our families.

I started in 2005.

I was retired from the government and one of the ladies that was working came up to me and said, would you be interested in volunteering with us?

And I said, absolutely.

And that's how I started out.

In 2005, I started as a volunteer filling food orders in the pantry area and did that for over ten years.

And then six years ago, I was selected from the Board of Directors to become the Director of the TEAM Pantry.

The pantry is amazing with its volunteers.

We have 10 to 12 different volunteers, six days a week.

The biggest thing with Nancy is she feels we can make a difference in somebody's life when they come to the pantry and they're down.

I mean, that's what it's all about.

It's trying to make people feel better.

And we can be the one thing that can brighten their day.

We have currently over 800 active client families.

We serve anywhere from 400 to 600 a month.

We do 25 to 35 families a day.

So it's quite an undertaking.

It's exciting to meet with the clients, especially when they have the children and bring their children with them.

She likes to take care of people.

That's her thing.

She's got a heart as big as gold.

And she's always thinking of people and how she can make things better.

We're there to help and we're there to give as much as we can.

Our volunteers are all about compassion and purpose.

And they give from the heart.

So I'm very honored to be a part of that organization for as long as I have been.

She may have retired from the government when she was like 50, but she took on this other job now, and she just loves it.

And it's all about food.

And, you know, food--we all need it to survive, and we're all helping to provide as much as we can for them.

Thank you for joining us to honor the 2022 Women of Achievement.

We hope their stories have inspired you to see the endless possibilities that come from volunteering.

On behalf of Women of Achievement, thank you.