January 12, 2025 • 12 mins
We spoke with Jenny Steadman, Ph.D. Executive Director Aurora Women and Girls Foundation about how the Aurora Women and Girls Foundation galvanizes resources to increase economic security, educational attainment, and leadership for women and girls in the Greater Hartford region.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, Thank you for listening to Community Access. My
guest today is Jenny Studman, executive director at the Aurora
Women and Girls Foundation. Good morning, good morning, Thanks so
much for having me. I can't wait to hear all
about this. Tell me about the Aurora Women and Girls Foundation.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Aurora Women and Girls Foundation was created in two
thousand by a group of very forward looking local women
who recognized what we continue to see this huge disparity
in charitable giving. So nationally, we're talking about over five
hundred and fifty billion dollars in charitable giving that's from
(00:39):
individuals and foundations, corporations. One point eight percent goes to
programs focused on women and girls.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Wow, that is not a lot, and if.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
We're talking women and girls of color, it's less than
half a percent. But we know that those women and
girls are the best charitable bang for your buck. Right
when you give women resources, they turn them right back
into their families and communities and everyone benefit. So that's
really the overarching reason for Aurora to exist.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Do we know why it's like that?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I mean, I think that it is the idea that
doing things for women and girls is a nice add
on that doesn't really recognize the way that women and
girls drive Connecticut's economy. Right they're forty eight percent of
the workforce. If they have to drop out of the
workforce because there's not access to childcare, right, then Connecticut
(01:38):
loses millions and millions of dollars in our overall GDP.
So you really need to think about the way that
women and girls, you know, contribute positively to society, right
Like they they really do make a huge difference for everyone.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So you're celebrating your twenty fifth anniversary this year, what's
that like?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
You know, it is such an exciting milestone. Aurora has
built this amazing community of women and men who recognize
the need to think about philanthropy with a gender lens,
and you know, they're really dedicated to, you know, changing
the world, one woman, one girl at a time. And
(02:20):
so at this point, we've had an exciting record breaking
year last year in terms of the money that we raised,
but especially in terms of the money that we gave
out into the community. And so to have that momentum
going into our twentieth fifth anniversary year, we're really excited.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Do you have any events planned to mark the occasion?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
We do our annual meeting will be coming up and
at that we'll be releasing a new research report that
looks back on the first twenty five years of the
twenty first century and sort of what has the status
of women and girls in Connecticut been. But I think
even more importantly, we're looking forward. What could we do
in the next decade that would get us closer to
(03:04):
gender and racial equity?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
And what would that be?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
You know, we're thinking about some you know, some super
practical things like how do we help women participate more
fully in the economy. So that can be you know,
policies like predictable scheduling for when you work right so
that women that can you know, secure their childcare, they'll
know their schedule ahead of time, they won't have surprise shifts.
(03:30):
It can be things like building a better leadership pipeline
for women across the state, like how do we have
more representation in the legislature in statewide office. It can
also be things like safety, like how do we increase
funding for women who are experiencing domestic violence so that
(03:50):
they can have safe places to live? Like there are
some really like practical and strategic things that we can do.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
And what is your web address for people who are
following in case they want to go online and look.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Sure www dot Aurora a u RR Foundation DOTRG.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Why, more than ever is there a need to build educational, economic,
and leadership opportunities for women and girls.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Because the need to build those opportunities is more important
because what we've really seen lately is steps backwards right
for women's opportunities, a real backlash against efforts to ensure
that they have equal and equitable access to resources. So
(04:37):
I think now more than ever, it becomes important for
women to be able to navigate higher education, to have
the supports they need to graduate and get higher paying careers,
to be able to set the tone when you talk
about women getting done right. When we get more women
in leadership, that can mean in the government sector, but
(05:00):
it can also be in corporate right, so then they'll
start to change the way that those big businesses run.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
And then their lives are impacted better, and then their
children's and so forth.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Right, it absolutely is all about that kind of multi
generational effect. So we fund a lot of programs that
help women gain access to college right and provide them
supportive resources. We have programs in particular for single moms
that are navigating higher ED, and what we see is
when they get through, their number one priority is to
(05:35):
start a college fund to make sure their kids are
pursuing higher ED. Right. It has this kind of ripple effect,
and also we see people in the community watch them
succeed despite the barriers. I mean, we're talking about women
who are working full time, going to school, single moms
raising their kids, right, Like, I.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Know, how are they supposed to do it with their children?
Is there a daycare at the school when they go
to college?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I mean, certainly some of the community colleges have access
to childcare, but lots of them don't, right, so they're
trying to fit it in during school hours. Yeah, that's
definitely one of the largest obstacles we see. Our research
from last year showed that one in five college students
is a student parent a student mom. So you know,
(06:24):
we're talking about a huge population that needs those kind
of resources.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And again, I don't want to sound like a man hater.
I love men, but I've said this over the last
thirty years of my career, when I would have to
leave to go home when one of my children was sick,
they were like, oh really, When a guy says I'm
leaving because my child's sick. They're like, oh, isn't me wonderful.
I know people are gonna hate me. I'm gonna get
hate mail for this, but it just is the way
(06:49):
it is. That's just the perception.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well, caregiving disproportionately falls on women, right, They're the ones
we saw it. We did a big report on the
impact of COVID on women in Connecticut, and what we
saw was how many of them had to drop out
of the workforce to care for kids when there weren't
schools weren't available. Disproportionately that impact fell on women.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
It would seem that because maybe men make more money
than women do, that men would work and women would
stay home.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Well, and what we saw was, you know, in this
kind of preview that report that's coming out right, when
we talk about gender wage gaps, those are persisting. Like
that has not gone away in this century, right, it
stays the same. We're seeing women gain access to some
(07:39):
more high paying jobs. But certainly what we saw during
the pandemic was that women are concentrated in service jobs
that make them particularly vulnerable to something like the pandemic,
right where they have to be face to face. It's
low paying again, it's the unpredictable scheduling. And during the pandemic,
(08:00):
women surpassed men for applying for unemployment for the first
time ever in Connecticut. Seventy five percent of those women
didn't have a college degree. So if we can build
those educational opportunities, we can get them to a place
where they're more economically stable, where they can have careers
(08:20):
where maybe they can work remotely, or they can you know,
have other opportunities that are not so don't make them
and their family so vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
What can the public do to help? Can we volunteer?
Can we make donations?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You can absolutely make donations to us. We would love
that that will help us raise our dollars that go
out into the community. You can come to our annual
meeting in March, you'll find that on our website and
hear about the new research and learn more and get involved.
And certainly you can volunteer. You can come to one
(08:55):
of our events. We'd love to have you.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Do you have any events coming up?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Our next one will be that one in March March
twenty seventh, our annual meeting. Then we'll be having our
one hundred Men event in April and in October twenty
second at the Bushnell is our annual fundraiser, our Luminary celebration.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
How Beautiful. Tell me about Aurora's new Young Women's initiative.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Oh, this is so exciting to me. So Aurora was
chosen to join a group of women's funds across the
country who have developed programming that targets teenage girls of
color and helps them develop leadership, helps them get ready
for college and career. And so we brought national funding
(09:38):
here to launch the first program of its kind in Connecticut.
And that national funding comes from big names like Melinda
Gates and the Ford Foundation. And so we are working
with the New Britain YWCA and their House of Teens program.
So this additional funding lets them extend that programming an
(09:59):
extra day. And what is most exciting to me about
this program is that we're giving the young women twenty
thousand dollars and they get to identify a community program
and then they get to give out a grant to
decide how to solve it beautiful, so they become the
change makers in their community right. They get to put
these leadership skills into practice. It really is about making
(10:23):
this next generation of women leaders. I think that you know,
to be able to share what we do and to
think about what it means to move resources to women
and girls. I think about the individual stories of the
women that have participated in our college success programs. So
(10:44):
we recently had a woman who failed her nursing exam
by one point.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Oh the poor thing.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
But she was in one of our funded programs, the
YWCA Career Women Program, and they said to her, you
know what, you get to be about this for two
weeks and then we're going to help you build a strategy.
She retook the class, she got back into the program.
She's ready to graduate in the spring. Beautiful, along with
(11:14):
her teenage son who's also graduating. How amazing, both from
Capital Community College. So what it takes for these women
is to have someone in their corner. And that's really
what it means to support Aurora is to be in
the corner for those women who need us in Greater Hartford.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
You have a great job.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
I couldn't imagine anything I would love to do more.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Listen, if you need a host or an MC or
something like that, I'm your girl. Anything to help women.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Great I'll take you up on it.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I'm speaking with Jenny Studman, executive director at the Aurora
Women and Girls Foundation. Thank you so much for being
here today again. People can volunteer, they can make donations.
There's so much that they can do to help.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Thank you so much for having me and for sharing
Aurora with your audience
Good morning, Thank you for listening to Community Access. My
guest today is Jenny Studman, executive director at the Aurora
Women and Girls Foundation. Good morning, good morning, Thanks so
much for having me. I can't wait to hear all
about this. Tell me about the Aurora Women and Girls Foundation.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
The Aurora Women and Girls Foundation was created in two
thousand by a group of very forward looking local women
who recognized what we continue to see this huge disparity
in charitable giving. So nationally, we're talking about over five
hundred and fifty billion dollars in charitable giving that's from
(00:39):
individuals and foundations, corporations. One point eight percent goes to
programs focused on women and girls.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Wow, that is not a lot, and if.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
We're talking women and girls of color, it's less than
half a percent. But we know that those women and
girls are the best charitable bang for your buck. Right
when you give women resources, they turn them right back
into their families and communities and everyone benefit. So that's
really the overarching reason for Aurora to exist.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Do we know why it's like that?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I mean, I think that it is the idea that
doing things for women and girls is a nice add
on that doesn't really recognize the way that women and
girls drive Connecticut's economy. Right they're forty eight percent of
the workforce. If they have to drop out of the
workforce because there's not access to childcare, right, then Connecticut
(01:38):
loses millions and millions of dollars in our overall GDP.
So you really need to think about the way that
women and girls, you know, contribute positively to society, right
Like they they really do make a huge difference for everyone.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So you're celebrating your twenty fifth anniversary this year, what's
that like?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
You know, it is such an exciting milestone. Aurora has
built this amazing community of women and men who recognize
the need to think about philanthropy with a gender lens,
and you know, they're really dedicated to, you know, changing
the world, one woman, one girl at a time. And
(02:20):
so at this point, we've had an exciting record breaking
year last year in terms of the money that we raised,
but especially in terms of the money that we gave
out into the community. And so to have that momentum
going into our twentieth fifth anniversary year, we're really excited.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Do you have any events planned to mark the occasion?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
We do our annual meeting will be coming up and
at that we'll be releasing a new research report that
looks back on the first twenty five years of the
twenty first century and sort of what has the status
of women and girls in Connecticut been. But I think
even more importantly, we're looking forward. What could we do
in the next decade that would get us closer to
(03:04):
gender and racial equity?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
And what would that be?
Speaker 2 (03:07):
You know, we're thinking about some you know, some super
practical things like how do we help women participate more
fully in the economy. So that can be you know,
policies like predictable scheduling for when you work right so
that women that can you know, secure their childcare, they'll
know their schedule ahead of time, they won't have surprise shifts.
(03:30):
It can be things like building a better leadership pipeline
for women across the state, like how do we have
more representation in the legislature in statewide office. It can
also be things like safety, like how do we increase
funding for women who are experiencing domestic violence so that
(03:50):
they can have safe places to live? Like there are
some really like practical and strategic things that we can do.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
And what is your web address for people who are
following in case they want to go online and look.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Sure www dot Aurora a u RR Foundation DOTRG.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Why, more than ever is there a need to build educational, economic,
and leadership opportunities for women and girls.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Because the need to build those opportunities is more important
because what we've really seen lately is steps backwards right
for women's opportunities, a real backlash against efforts to ensure
that they have equal and equitable access to resources. So
(04:37):
I think now more than ever, it becomes important for
women to be able to navigate higher education, to have
the supports they need to graduate and get higher paying careers,
to be able to set the tone when you talk
about women getting done right. When we get more women
in leadership, that can mean in the government sector, but
(05:00):
it can also be in corporate right, so then they'll
start to change the way that those big businesses run.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
And then their lives are impacted better, and then their
children's and so forth.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Right, it absolutely is all about that kind of multi
generational effect. So we fund a lot of programs that
help women gain access to college right and provide them
supportive resources. We have programs in particular for single moms
that are navigating higher ED, and what we see is
when they get through, their number one priority is to
(05:35):
start a college fund to make sure their kids are
pursuing higher ED. Right. It has this kind of ripple effect,
and also we see people in the community watch them
succeed despite the barriers. I mean, we're talking about women
who are working full time, going to school, single moms
raising their kids, right, Like, I.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Know, how are they supposed to do it with their children?
Is there a daycare at the school when they go
to college?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I mean, certainly some of the community colleges have access
to childcare, but lots of them don't, right, so they're
trying to fit it in during school hours. Yeah, that's
definitely one of the largest obstacles we see. Our research
from last year showed that one in five college students
is a student parent a student mom. So you know,
(06:24):
we're talking about a huge population that needs those kind
of resources.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And again, I don't want to sound like a man hater.
I love men, but I've said this over the last
thirty years of my career, when I would have to
leave to go home when one of my children was sick,
they were like, oh really, When a guy says I'm
leaving because my child's sick. They're like, oh, isn't me wonderful.
I know people are gonna hate me. I'm gonna get
hate mail for this, but it just is the way
(06:49):
it is. That's just the perception.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well, caregiving disproportionately falls on women, right, They're the ones
we saw it. We did a big report on the
impact of COVID on women in Connecticut, and what we
saw was how many of them had to drop out
of the workforce to care for kids when there weren't
schools weren't available. Disproportionately that impact fell on women.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
It would seem that because maybe men make more money
than women do, that men would work and women would
stay home.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Well, and what we saw was, you know, in this
kind of preview that report that's coming out right, when
we talk about gender wage gaps, those are persisting. Like
that has not gone away in this century, right, it
stays the same. We're seeing women gain access to some
(07:39):
more high paying jobs. But certainly what we saw during
the pandemic was that women are concentrated in service jobs
that make them particularly vulnerable to something like the pandemic,
right where they have to be face to face. It's
low paying again, it's the unpredictable scheduling. And during the pandemic,
(08:00):
women surpassed men for applying for unemployment for the first
time ever in Connecticut. Seventy five percent of those women
didn't have a college degree. So if we can build
those educational opportunities, we can get them to a place
where they're more economically stable, where they can have careers
(08:20):
where maybe they can work remotely, or they can you know,
have other opportunities that are not so don't make them
and their family so vulnerable.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
What can the public do to help? Can we volunteer?
Can we make donations?
Speaker 2 (08:34):
You can absolutely make donations to us. We would love
that that will help us raise our dollars that go
out into the community. You can come to our annual
meeting in March, you'll find that on our website and
hear about the new research and learn more and get involved.
And certainly you can volunteer. You can come to one
(08:55):
of our events. We'd love to have you.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Do you have any events coming up?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Our next one will be that one in March March
twenty seventh, our annual meeting. Then we'll be having our
one hundred Men event in April and in October twenty
second at the Bushnell is our annual fundraiser, our Luminary celebration.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
How Beautiful. Tell me about Aurora's new Young Women's initiative.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Oh, this is so exciting to me. So Aurora was
chosen to join a group of women's funds across the
country who have developed programming that targets teenage girls of
color and helps them develop leadership, helps them get ready
for college and career. And so we brought national funding
(09:38):
here to launch the first program of its kind in Connecticut.
And that national funding comes from big names like Melinda
Gates and the Ford Foundation. And so we are working
with the New Britain YWCA and their House of Teens program.
So this additional funding lets them extend that programming an
(09:59):
extra day. And what is most exciting to me about
this program is that we're giving the young women twenty
thousand dollars and they get to identify a community program
and then they get to give out a grant to
decide how to solve it beautiful, so they become the
change makers in their community right. They get to put
these leadership skills into practice. It really is about making
(10:23):
this next generation of women leaders. I think that you know,
to be able to share what we do and to
think about what it means to move resources to women
and girls. I think about the individual stories of the
women that have participated in our college success programs. So
(10:44):
we recently had a woman who failed her nursing exam
by one point.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Oh the poor thing.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
But she was in one of our funded programs, the
YWCA Career Women Program, and they said to her, you
know what, you get to be about this for two
weeks and then we're going to help you build a strategy.
She retook the class, she got back into the program.
She's ready to graduate in the spring. Beautiful, along with
(11:14):
her teenage son who's also graduating. How amazing, both from
Capital Community College. So what it takes for these women
is to have someone in their corner. And that's really
what it means to support Aurora is to be in
the corner for those women who need us in Greater Hartford.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
You have a great job.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
I couldn't imagine anything I would love to do more.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Listen, if you need a host or an MC or
something like that, I'm your girl. Anything to help women.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Great I'll take you up on it.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I'm speaking with Jenny Studman, executive director at the Aurora
Women and Girls Foundation. Thank you so much for being
here today again. People can volunteer, they can make donations.
There's so much that they can do to help.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Thank you so much for having me and for sharing
Aurora with your audience
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