PERSONIFIED Dress for Success suits women

Virginia Germann

Dress for Success Northwest Arkansas Executive Director Mission: At Dress for Success Northwest Arkansas, we help women secure employment, retain their jobs, grow their careers and transform their lives. ■ Services provided:

We provide a variety of workforce development programs and services including resume assistance, mock interviews, career coaching, personal and professional development workshops and many networking opportunities to help our clients confidently enter the workplace and grow their careers.

■ Service area: Northwest Arkansas

■ Average number of

people served annually: Our goal is to serve more than 300 women each year.

Why do you work for a nonprofit organization?

Do you have a personal connection to the mission? If so, what is it? We (me, the staff, board of directors and volunteers)

believe in a world where women do not live in poverty, are treated with dignity and respect, and are strengthening their families and shaping their communities.

What challenges face your organization? Dress for Success is embarking on an awareness campaign to provide a more robust understanding of our scale and services. It goes beyond the dress: We provide programs to help a woman get a job, maintain and grow in that job (or new career), become financially educated, achieve self-care and transform into leaders. Our work is motivated by the fact that when women prosper, so does everyone else.

Are there volunteer opportunities in your organization? What are they? We are only a staff of three so our volunteers are really the driving force of the organization. We have many opportunities from getting involved as a board member or serving on a committee, to coaching participants for job readiness, mentoring and following up with them for job retention and career growth, helping in event and fundraising committees or helping with the overall operations of our office and career center.

What upcoming fundraisers and/or other events does your organization have planned? Our next event will be the Success Stories Brunch, coming up on March 26 at 11:30 a.m. It is an inspiring morning where guests will meet three amazing women as they share their stories of empowerment and their personal journeys toward success. For more information and tickets, you can visit www.dfsnwa.org/ssb.

File photo “Our work is motivated by the fact that when women prosper, so does everyone else,” says Virginia Germann, executive director of Dress for Success Northwest Arkansas.