Greetings!

Happy Holidays! In the midst of the hustle and bustle of the season, we want to take a moment to thank you for your commitment to Women Employed. You make our work possible.

We also want to share a message from Reyna Moreno, a valued Women Employed supporter and alumna of the Pattis Family Foundation Summer Leadership Program. Reyna, like so many of us, has first-hand experience with many of the systems Women Employed is working to address.
- Reyna Moreno, Summer Leadership Alumna 2020

Friend, your support really does matter and we are deeply grateful for you being a part of the WE Family. Together we’ll continue to create transformative systemic change and ensure women EMERGE from this pandemic stronger than before.

Best wishes and happy holidays from all of us!
Remembering bell hooks
“If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t start with blackness; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path. I think of feminism, and I think of anti-racist struggles as part of it. But where I stand spiritually is, steadfastly, on a path about love.”
– bell hooks

Some souls enter the world to show us what is possible; to give it voice; to give it vision; to give it life. bell hooks gave life to the notion of agency; to radical, transformative love; to speaking one’s truth; to critical thinking; to knowing that you are enough. She was masterful at boldly naming the thing, but not allowing us to fixate or become stuck by also offering a mental picture of what the thing can be. 

I am thankful to her for providing the words to guide me to forgiveness and compassion when I didn’t think it was possible. I am thankful to her for underscoring and normalizing that “knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving.” I am thankful to her for showing that critique and love can and do coexist. I am thankful to her for not being exclusively defined by any one identity or classification. I am thankful for her vulnerability, honesty, boldness, and her persistent path of love and freedom. I am thankful that she chose the path of educator and writer and is forever eternalized through a rich body of work that we get to rediscover over and over again. 

rest in power queen bell hooks!
Cherita Ellens
President and CEO
SHEcovery: Get Women Back to Work
Decades of hard-fought progress toward achieving gender equity has evaporated over the past eighteen months. ​Especially as women have been pushed out of the workforce in record numbers due to COVID-19 while taking on increased childcare and caregiving responsibilities. Earlier this month Women Employed's President and CEO, Cherita Ellens, joined leaders working across sectors for a virtual discussion exploring how to address the impact COVID-19 has on women in the workforce, hosted by our friends at Chicago Foundation for Women (CFW).

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