The Wisconsin Women’s Network held a virtual gathering Monday night featuring newly welcomed president Shauntay Nelson to discuss the past and future impacts of the organization in the Wisconsin community. They held the meeting ahead of Wisconsin’s Big Share event Tuesday.
Big Share is the annual online day of giving that supports 82 nonprofit members of the Community Shares of Wisconsin, which WWN is a part of, according to Big Share’s website.
“I grew up watching women who didn’t always have formal power, but they had influence,” Nelson said. “Leadership is never reserved for the person who has the loudest voice or highest title. I often say I am simply here to invite women into the power they already hold.”
WWN’s three core programs are mentorship, the Policy Institute and artful women which aim to create spaces and expand opportunities for women to lead, according to WWN executive director Emily Hyde Cawley.
The nonprofit was founded in 1979 to fill the vacuum left after the Wisconsin Commission on the Status of Women was disassembled amidst growing backlash to feminism, Hyde Cawley said.
“For the past 13 years, we’ve trained 24 to 48 women in public policy and mentorship without public funding,” previous president Bianca Shaw said. “We’ve depended on private funding and donations to keep our programs going.”
Big Share has been one of WWN’s most important fundraising events since its introduction 12 years ago, according to Hyde Cawley.
Participating groups who receive the most individual donations during the event’s “Power Hour” from noon to 1 p.m. will also receive an additional $1,000 gift, according to Nelson. It doesn’t matter how much people donate, as long as they do, according to Nelson.
“Movements grow not through one person, but through every person, and through many people taking one small action collectively,” Nelson said. “Let’s show what’s possible when women invest in women.”
One of the women who Nelson said invested in her early on at WWN, her former mentor Adrienne Gilbert Ramirez, was in attendance at the virtual gathering.
Moments like having Gilbert Ramirez present as she steps into her role as president make Nelson reflect on how the strong, deeply supportive stewardship of her mentors in turn fostered her own ability to lead successfully, she said.
“That’s the power of mentorship. It’s not transactional, it’s transformational,” Nelson said. “Mentors didn’t just give me advice, they gave me access … They didn’t rush me, they didn’t compete with me, they wasn’t threatened by my growth. They were literally pushing me into a power I didn’t know I had.”
Reckoning with the profound impacts WWN has had on her life, Nelson knows how important it is to be intentional about transferring her wisdom and power with future generations of women.
“It’s not just about helping one woman succeed, it’s about creating a rippling effect of confidence and strategy and values in women who know that they belong in every room that they enter,” Nelson said. “[Leadership is] about reaching back and making sure no one has to climb in isolation.”
