Local women leaders being recognized by WELD
Both the coronavirus pandemic and the racial justice uprising of 2020 are reshaping our day-to-day lives and perception of American society.
And women have been at the forefront of change in central Ohio.
Sumithra Jagannath is developing technology that allows customers to shop safely and businesses to remain open amid the health crisis.
Wendy Sherman Heckler is educating future leaders on the global challenges women face – including economic setback during the pandemic – in college classrooms.
Lachandra Baker and Lillian Morales are continuing their work fostering diversity, equity and inclusion in the corporate world.
They are among 12 Columbus women being honored as “high-impact leaders” by Women for Economic and Leadership Development (WELD), a Westerville-based nonprofit. The “Women WELDING the Way” honorees will be highlighted in a 2022 calendar, featuring the theme “leadership in the new era.”
And they will be recognized in a ceremony at the Ohio Statehouse Atrium on Nov. 4.
“I’m just a little Black girl from Sylvania, Georgia,” said Baker, 48, of Madison Township, who recently joined National Church Residences as the senior director of employee engagement. “I say that all the time because it’s a dream that I had to be able to do more and be more and impact more people. And so, if some other small-town girl sees me and says, ‘If she made it, I can make it, too,’ then it’s all worth it for me.”
Baker is impacting many through her job and work on the DEI Advisory Board of the Besa nonprofit organization, which curates community service projects.
“What I don’t want companies to do is performative action and allyship,” she said. “It’s so easy to put a black square up on your Instagram page or raise a Pride flag or put a Black Lives Matter sign in their window, but what does that really mean to them? What behaviors are you actually going to change?”
Baker said the social justice protests of 2020 prompted a lot of reflection; her mother was 19 during the Civil Rights Movement, and now her own 19-year-old child is engaged in social justice.
“I cried quite a bit because I thought
we should have been further along than we were,” Baker said. “(But) this younger generation is so activated, and they’re walking in their own authenticity.”
But young people still need help building confidence.
That was a lesson Sumithra Jagannath learned from her daughter, who dreamed of being a seamstress, teacher and nurse when she was younger.
“One day I asked her, ‘So why do you want to be a nurse? Why not the doctor?’ ” said Jagannath, 53, of Blacklick, who is the president of ZED Digital. “And she said, ‘Mom, can I be a doctor?’ That’s when I realized that she was being told – not at home – that these are the professions that women typically take up. (But) we have the same God-given intelligence that everybody else has. There’s no need to feel like we can’t do it.”
Jagannath navigated discrimination in the tech industry to build her own award-winning digital marketing and software enterprise. The company specializes in digital solutions like multimodal trip planners, mobile ticketing and contactless payment.
Previously specializing in the transportation industry, ZED Digital is expanding the technology to facilitate contactless experiences at restaurants and other public places to encourage safety amid the pandemic.
The company’s new free app, Zig, helps customers find things to do in different cities, and encourages them to rate businesses on their safety policies.
“That’s where I see my role – to help businesses with technology and to survive in this crisis,” she said.
Just as ZED Digital was positioned to respond to the pandemic, Otterbein University was already having conversations about race prior to the summer of 2020. Earlier that year, it became a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Center, which is part of an initiative to dismantle the belief in a race-based hierarchy of human value.
“(Otterbein) didn’t always live up to its ideals,” said Wendy Sherman Heckler, 52, of Clintonville, who is the university’s provost and senior vice president of academic affairs. “We are constantly trying to figure out how to be better.”
As part of the TRHT program, Otterbein has been hosting racial healing circles to encourage dialogue among diverse groups.
Sherman-heckler also teaches a course on women’s leadership, which addresses theories of leadership and the global condition of women.
And this year, she and her students discussed the disruption in workplace equality for many women who were forced to leave their jobs to care for their families during the pandemic.
“You have to talk about the problem,” she said. “We have to talk about what it is that we need to bring people together to work on solutions. I hope that my students leave with a sense of being empowered to do that kind of collaboration, critical thinking and truth-telling.”
While Sherman Heckler is preparing future leaders in the classroom, Lillian Morales is developing them as the program director for the Latina Mentoring Academy. Launched in 2010, the organization pairs participants with mentors and provides resources to bolster their professional careers – even amid the pandemic.
“Next year, hopefully, we’ll go back to in-person events,” said Morales, 44, of Pickerington. “We’re making sure we continue our programming, even if we’re doing it virtually.”
Morales is a human resources professional, who spent over a decade working for the City of Columbus before taking a job as the human resource director at United Midwest Savings Bank.
To Morales, leadership in the new era means being able to adapt to serve the needs new generations of workers. And she hopes to see a change for women professionals in the future.
“It’s unbelievable that, even in 2021, we’re still having the same conversations about women in leadership and women of color in leadership, and why we’ve got to continuously show people that there needs to be change,” she said. “My dream is that one day there won’t be need for women empowerment groups because we are seen as equals.” Other WELD honorees include: h Samantha Anderson, senior wealth manager, Budros, Ruhlin & Roe, Inc.
h Mary E. Auch, regional president, central Ohio, PNC Bank
h Joy Bivens, deputy county administrator for Health & Human Services, Franklin County
h Angela Cornelius Dawson, executive director, Ohio Commission on Minority Health
h Dr. Laurie AM Hommema, senior medical director, Provider and Associate Well-being, Ohiohealth; associate program director, Ohiohealth Riverside Family Medicine Residency
h LC Johnson, founder and CEO, Zora’s House
h Merry Korn, CEO for Pearl Interactive Network, Inc.
h Letha Pugh, co-founder, Bake Me Happy, LLC ethompson@dispatch.com @miss_ethompson