Axelson Access - Women in Leadership: Building Bridges Across Generations and Cultures

Axelson Access presents:  Women in Leadership: Building Bridges Across Generations and Cultures

The panel is an opportunity for both organizational insights and personal stories with women leaders from a variety of backgrounds and nonprofit subsectors. What are the lessons that women leaders can learn from one another? What cross-generational wisdom can be shared? Axelson Access is an opportunity for leaders to reimagine the work that they do.

Thursday November 4, 2021 12:00noon - 1:30pm

$10.00

Zoom

Moderator: Pier C. Rogers, PhD, Director of the Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management at North Park University

Pier C. Rogers, PhD, is Director of the Axelson Center for Nonprofit Management at North Park University. She has led the Center to expand programming, reach new audiences, and solidify its role as the premier nonprofit management professional education center in the Chicago metro area. She also teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in nonprofit management in the School of Business and Nonprofit Management.

Dr. Rogers has held academic positions as well as nonprofit leadership roles including Associate Executive Director of the New York City Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers; Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Management at the New School University in New York City; Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer at Yale University’s Divinity School and Program on Non-Profit Organizations (PONPO). Other management positions Dr. Rogers has held include at United Way of Massachusetts Bay, at Associated Black Charities in NYC, and at New York University.

Dr. Rogers currently serves as Board President of ARNOVA (the international nonprofit research association), where in 2009 she co-founded the “Diversity Scholars and Leaders Professional Development Workshop”, which serves doctoral students of color from all over the world whose studies focus on the nonprofit sector. She is also a member of the “Willie’s Warriors Advisory Board” at the Chicago Foundation for Women, and the Diversity Advisory Board at UCAN. She most recently stepped down from her role as chair of the Strategic Communications Committee of the Wellesley College Alumnae Association.

Panelists: Melissa V. Abad, Research scholar at the Stanford VMWare Women's Leadership Innovation Lab, Britney Robbins, Founder, The Gray Matter Experience, Irene Jisun Sohn, Executive Director, Hanul Family Alliance,  Linda Xoxhitl Tortolero, President and CEO, Mujeres Latinas en Accion

Melissa V. Abad, PhD is a research scholar at the Stanford VMWare Women's Leadership Innovation Lab and leads the intersectional leadership research agenda. Her research examines the occupational trajectories of women of color in Corporate America and the resources that help their leadership development. Dr. Abad’s scholarly research lies at the intersection of organizational sociology and intersectionality. Current projects include identifying the strategies women of color employ to advance their careers, how these differ by racial/ ethnic group, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of diversity programming. She’s given talks and workshops on intersectionality, diversity management, Asian, Black, and Latinx leadership, and ERG membership.

Britney Robbins is a serial social entrepreneur that loves innovation, forward thinking and is constantly identifying problems that can be solved through business creation. She's worked within Chicago's entrepreneurship and tech community for the past eight years working within some of Chicago's top venture capital firms and incubators including Cleveland Avenue, Sandbox Industries, Lightbank and 1871.

In 2016, she founded The Gray Matter Experience - a nonprofit dedicated to unlocking the self-determining power of Black youth and strengthening their ties to community through real world experience in entrepreneurship and has since served over 600 Black teens in this mission. She has been recognized as one of Ariel Investment, BMO Harris and WVON's 40 Under 40 Gamechangers, Essence Magazine's Woke 100, a finalist for Ebony Magazine's Power 100 People's Choice Award, featured on Fox32, Chicago Inno, BlackEntrepreneur.com, DNAInfo Chicago, Chicago Tribune, and Essence Magazine for her work through Gray Matter. Most recently, she's been named as one of the 26 Most Influential, 20 Most Inspiring Chicagoans and one of the Chicago Defender's 2021 Women of Excellence.

Britney is passionate about improving the well-being of Black communities and is focused on providing quality resources, more direct access and education to see that vision made reality.

Since 2002, Irene Jisun Sohn, MSW has been working for Hanul Family Alliance, a nonprofit community-based-organization that strives to become an effective, efficient and supportive provider of comprehensive social service provider to an ever changing Korean-American community in the Metropolitan Chicago Area.  In the past 19 years, Irene has been a strong voice to advocate for services and resources that are culturally and linguistically appropriate for the Korean elderly and their families through many involvement with federal and state government agencies, local and national collaborations and coalitions, and private sponsors and individual donors that are committed to a vision of equal access to services for all elderly, regardless of ethnicity or language.

After serving 4 years as a direct service worker at Hanul Family Alliance, she was promoted to the Deputy Executive Director and assisted the Executive Director for almost 10 years. In September of 2016, she was appointed as the third Executive Director of the organization, which boasts 35 years of history. Irene not only oversees operation of the agency’s programming, fundraising and human resource management, but also is in charge of leading the strategic steering committee of the organization to continuously revisit the organization’s mission and vision to meet the changing needs of the community. She has assisted completing three rounds of strategic plans during her career with the organization.

Linda Xoxhitl Tortolero, JD is delighted to serve as President and CEO of Mujeres Latinas en Accion, the nation’s longest standing Latina organization. She builds strategic relationships with stakeholders and carries out Mujeres’ strategic plan to address effectively the immediate needs facing Latinas and their families.Under Linda’s leadership, Mujeres is a fierce advocate on key issues such as gender-based violence, women’s health and economic security, immigration, and reproductive justice. Most recently, Mujeres opened up a new Brighton Park office with its partner Esperanza Health Centers, a FQHC. Linda serves on the Action Council of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and the Steering Committee of the City Clerk’s Chicago Status of Women and Girls Working Group. She also was a member of Mayor Lightfoot's Health and Human Services Transition Committee. Linda has a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University in Political Science and History of Modern Latin America and a Juris Doctor from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. The Chicago Community Trust presented Linda with its inaugural Fellowship Award for the Leadership Greater Chicago Signature Fellows program. She was recently awarded the Public Service Award from the National Association of Women Lawyers.