Ayile Arnett

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2020

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Ayile Arnett

Ayile says that if she sees a problem and she thinks of a solution, then it’s time to start a business. And that’s exactly what she does.

Problems: People need free rides to medical appointments. Millions of dollars’ worth of unopened medications are thrown out when a patient dies. There are people who cannot afford their medications. There are people who cannot pick up their medications and need them delivered to their homes.

Imagine a kind of Uber that solves each of these problems and you will understand what Ayile has accomplished.

Using a technology called blockchain she set up businesses to meet just these needs. The process providing free transportation to take patients to doctor’s appointments served 200 people per month across four states. That service stopped during the pandemic, but Ayile’s other solutions continue.

She is responsible along with Phil Baker for creating RemediChain, which reclaims unused medications and makes them available to vulnerable patients in need. Shortly after start up, RemediChain had collected over $2.2 million worth of unused oral chemotherapy drugs.

This was followed by Scriptride, which provides home delivery of prescription medications for those who cannot get to the pharmacy.

How did this happen?

Ayile worked in healthcare for over 18 years. Part of her work included tracking patient information to ensure that patients were going home with what they needed to get well and avoid being readmitted. Through this work it became apparent to her that treatment results differed based on patient income levels.

Less money, worse outcomes, more hospital returns. Those with higher incomes experienced fewer hospital returns, better health outcomes.

She also saw a huge amount of waste of unopened prescriptions which were being thrown out after patients died. She realized that if these drugs could be salvaged, they could be used by other patients who struggled to pay for their meds. She met Phil Baker, founder of the nonprofit Good Shepherd Pharmacy. He wanted to address this problem. And so together they established Remedichain.

This was shortly followed by Scriptride which delivers medications to those who cannot get to the pharmacy. These solutions all require secure data collection and that’s where blockchain comes in. What kind of data is collected for these businesses? Who needs a ride to the doctor? Who can donate unused medication? Who needs these medications? Where do they live? Picture blockchain as a safe, immutable ledger that can be trusted by medical professionals.

During Covid, Ayile and her husband transformed their business Communiride into a transport business concentrating on serving small businesses. Ayile is the CEO. Her husband, whose background is in logistics, works with the drivers.

She continues working with Phil Baker, now serving on the non-profit’s board and being the point person for Scriptride, the medication delivery system. Drivers do not know what meds are being delivered or anything about the client’s health condition, so confidentiality is maintained. How did Ayile become an entrepreneur? She started young, “pushing” candy sales in elementary school.

Ayile was born in Madison, Wisconsin. There she was surrounded and inspired by determined people who were always involved in community projects. Her mother was an attorney with her own business and her father an entrepreneur. In the sixth grade she met her BFF Amy. Amy is from a Nigerian family who moved to Wisconsin before Amy was born. Amy’s mother was constantly learning, eventually earning a Ph.D. and always keeping the kids informed about school and about community work. From this Ayile learned that if one solution doesn’t work, she “finds the solution tomorrow.”

She followed a favorite cousin to Nashville where she enrolled at Tennessee State University. There she met her husband and in 2011 they moved to Memphis to be near his family. The mother of four children, ages 2 ½ to 12, Ayile’s passions are community building and mentorship. Ayile is a huge Whitehaven booster.

Communiride is located there and 81 percent of the workers are Whitehaven residents.

Shortly after joining the Memphis Chamber of Commerce, Ayile was invited to be a mentor through Epicenter. She is paired with a new entrepreneur with whom she meets weekly. Mentees are paired with an experienced entrepreneur to develop new skills. Pairs normally meet for an hour, but Ayile and her partner regularly meet for several. Ayile says she is sure she learns just as much as her mentee.

Ayile and Phil Baker received a Memphis Business Journal CEO of the Year Innovation Award in Ayile also chosen as one of the 2019 Forty Under Forty, influential urban elite professionals.

We can’t wait to see where her initiative takes her next!

Beverly Marrero

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2020

STEADFASTNESS
for a woman with a lifetime of achievement:

Beverly Marrero

Beverly Marrero began a lifetime of activism in 1960 as a young mother knocking on doors for Sen. John. F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Over the next four decades, she campaigned for many Democratic candidates and represented Tennessee at the 1976 Democratic National Convention. She became a candidate herself in 2003, serving in the General Assembly until losing her seat following redistricting in 2012. Just this week, she tweeted about writing her senators in support of Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. That’s 62 years of advocacy and counting.

Beverly traces her political involvement to her 9th grade civics teacher who instilled in her the idea that government was only as good as the people involved. Her religious upbringing emphasized civil rights. And growing up in segregated Memphis, she realized how unfair society was to black people in our community. Campaigning for Kennedy was a way to address those inequities. Formative memories of that time included the assassinations of Kennedy and two other leaders she admired: Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. She also recalls ironing clothes in front of the television while watching the Watergate hearings.

It was no surprise that she responded when a friend of a friend encouraged her to support little-known Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter for president. She and two other Memphis women drove to Atlanta and became the only non-Georgians among members of the so-called Peanut Brigade of Carter supporters who flew to New Hampshire for that state’s primary. Carter won.

Beverly campaigned in other states and was tapped to represent Tennessee on the Convention Rules Committee, where she played a role in Democratic Party history. Beverly and a delegate from North Carolina introduced a measure to guarantee women delegates an equal share of the seats for the 1980 convention. At that time, women did all the daily work in the campaigns – knocking on doors, folding paper, stuffing envelopes, and sorting bulk mail. The men went to the conventions. The controversial gender equality measure failed in the Rules Committee, and on June 21, 1976, a headline in the New York Times read “Democratic Panel Refuses Equality Pledge to Women”.

Beverly moved to Florida a few years later but remained close to her good friend Congressman Steve Cohen. After she returned to Memphis in 1999, Cohen encouraged her to run for the General Assembly. Beverly hesitated but eventually she became a first-time candidate at age 64. She won a seat in the Tennessee House of Representatives in 2003. When Cohen was elected to Congress, he endorsed Beverly for his Tennessee Senate seat, which she won in 2007 and held until 2012.

As an elected official Beverly was an outspoken champion for civil rights, consumer rights, the environment, and women’s, children’s, and LGBTQ issues. She also was known for her signature fashion accessory: a hat. But the true defining aspects of her legislative tenure were her values and her approach, said former legislative colleague Jeanne Richardson.

Beverly knew how to make a compelling point in debate without alienating her opponent, Richardson said. “Her points are always based on her own loyalty to her basic values, the improvement of the human condition especially for those most in need without resources or respect, the improvement of the environment out of respect for future generations and nature itself, and a strong sense of fairness and equity in all human interactions including those with the environment.”

Those values led Beverly to take unpopular – and sometimes ultimately unwinnable — stands in Nashville. She voted against holding a referendum to amend the state Constitution to ban gay marriage. The referendum passed, but the ban was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2006, while on the Public Health and Family Assistance Subcommittee, she voted against a proposed amendment that would have given state lawmakers more power to restrict and regulate abortions. She worked diligently to keep this in committee for many years, but it eventually passed the House and the Senate, became Amendment One on the 2014 ballot, and was approved by Tennessee voters. In 2012, during what would become her final legislative sessions, she cast the sole vote against a Senate bill requiring an abstinence-centered family life curricula in Tennessee public schools.

Beverly’s commitment to economic issues led to her recognition as a Family Economic Success Champion by Women in Government, a national organization that supports women state legislators. The organization highlighted several bills including protecting identify theft and reducing foreclosures.

For her stewardship of the environment, in 2009 she received the highest ranking of any legislator by the Tennessee Conservation Voters. Beverly fought for clean water, recycling, minimum energy requirements for appliances, and equitable representation for environmental interests on air, water and solid waste quality control boards. A key conservation accomplishment was successfully sponsoring legislation to make Overton Park’s Old Forest a state Natural-Scientific area in 2011.

The following year, Beverly lost her re-election bid after her Senate district was redrawn. She returned to her role as a citizen advocate. In 2014, Planned Parenthood honored Beverly with its highest honor, the James Award for her work in the House, the Senate, and in the community, saying: When we needed an Attorney General’s ruling on pending legislation, Beverly made the request. When state agencies were slow to respond to requests for information, Beverly broke up the logjam. She spoke out against legislation that harmed women, families and children, even when she stood alone in the Tennessee Senate chambers to do so.

Today, Beverly’s priority is advocating for seniors. At a time when many people have been retired for nearly two decades, Beverly was just reappointed as chair of the advisory committee to the Aging Commission of the Mid-South.

Whether working for a candidate, sponsoring legislation or volunteering in the community, Beverly sums up her accomplishments in a single statement: “I think we have a responsibility to do something to level the playing field.”

Judy Card

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2020

VISION
for a woman whose sensitivity to women’s needs led her to tremendous achievements for women:

Judy Card

Madeleine Albright, the United States’ first female secretary of state,
famously said: “There is a special place in Hell for women who don’t help other women.” Be assured: Judy Card is headed for whatever Paradise she chooses!

Judy lives as a vibrant example of what it means to help other women – to nurture, to value and to celebrate all that is powerful, that is precious, that is universal, mysterious and eternal about the feminine.

The Mid-South was blessed the day that this daughter of the East Tennessee hills chose to cross the state for a job in the Memphis Public Library. Thanks to her, Women of Achievement was born and has survived and thrived since 1984.

Judy came to Memphis carrying generations of Appalachian storytelling and singing in her veins. She sang when her extended family gathered in four-part harmony around a piano, and she sang in the car with her mom. Judy graduated in a class of 125 from the same Hixson, Tennessee, school building where she began her education. She happily escaped to university in Knoxville to finally live in a place where everyone did NOT know everything about her whole life!

She awakened to the stirrings of women’s equality on campus – swapping “person” for “he” in conversation and reading – a lot. She moved to Memphis in 1975 with her library degree and special training in children’s service, leaving behind a brief marriage, a no-benefits job with some architects and beginning her 40 hugely productive, creative years as a librarian.

The Memphis library was striving to desegregate staffing, so she was posted to the Hollywood Branch. After a break for some San Francisco adventures, she returned as acting director of the children’s department and eventually was invited to apply to direct the adult literacy project. She trained prison inmates and spoke at many African American churches. She recalls the most memorable moment of two years with the literacy program — when she had to speak after the masterful Apostle GE Patterson delivered his Sunday message!

Judy found other women sharing her concerns in the Memphis chapter of the National Organization for Women and its consciousness raising groups where storytelling was again a potent force. She also volunteered with the Memphis Center for Reproductive Health self-help groups. Volunteers with the center’s Memphis Self-Help Collective were trained using their own bodies to teach other women about their sexual health and how to check for disease and care for their bodies – from birth control and abortion to pregnancy, menopause and abuse. They instructed about women’s health at campus events, women’s fairs and in church basements, equipped with a metal speculum, which Judy still has, and a slide show of their cervixes. “We rabidly wanted to show you all about your body,” Judy says.

For several years, she counseled patients before termination procedures at the center, now known as CHOICES, and served on the board.

In the late ‘80s and 1990s, Judy and four women friends formed Delta Rising Storytellers, a collective that told stories about women, “love stories, more or less,” at events like Take Back the Night for free and for pay at festivals and museums. She was part of the first group of Artists in the Schools, telling tales to engage children in active listening. She hosted a radio show on WEVL for about 6 years, called Pass It On. And she also performed with a group called Tellervision that combined stories and music. She served on the board and produced festivals for the Tennessee Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling. As a volunteer, she coordinated children’s tents for the Center for Southern Folklore and Memphis in May.

Judy was the pick when library leadership created a staff development position for planning programs and writing grants. That’s where she was, in an airy office high above Peabody Avenue, when community organizer Jeanne Dreifus sought library partners to seek a federal Humanities grant for a women’s history project offered through Radcliffe College. Judy wrote a winning grant and the Memphis team produced Women in the Community in 1981, four programs of panels and music on women’s historic leadership in religion, music, social services and work. The series brought to light many rarely mentioned and little-known stories of women’s roles in local history – city builders, change makers, creators of institutions and makers of policy.

Journalist Deborah Clubb, weary of covering events that honored men’s accomplishments, was inspired by those local stories and came looking for help inventing a celebration of local women to be part of the new national recognition of women’s history each March. Judy says, “It was the obvious next thing to do.”

Meetings of the 15 founders were held around her conference table, talking about Deborah’s idea of building a community coalition of women and women’s groups to collect local women’s history and give awards for outstanding community work by women. They invented a program of seven awards that capture and preserve women’s essential and outstanding work to make communities better – and indeed to make history.

Judy is the only person besides Deborah who has participated in the Women of Achievement process and planning most years since 1984. She was the third president and the two have co-written many of the essays. Judy’s wide connections across Memphis communities shaped and strengthened WA’s diversity of faiths, ages, races and communities engaged in the nomination and selection process and in the panorama of women among the 262 honorees and three groups whose stories are preserved. It’s an archive of stories that can’t be matched, Judy says. Stories and honorees come from the community and are shared with the community, not as a fundraiser, she says, but “because someone has done something to be remembered and recognized.”

In 2004, Judy was named Librarian of the Year by the Mid-South Chapter Special Librarians Association and the Memphis Area Library Council. She served twice as president of the library association now called the Library Learning Network.

She retired from the Memphis system after 28 years in late 2003, as head of Staff Training.  She traveled a bit then joined the 5-county First Regional Library in Mississippi in 2006 to coordinate Youth Services. She retired again in 2016, then returned to be interim director, then REALLY retired in 2018.

She is on the board of the Memphis Area Women’s Council and recently rejoined the Nubian Theater Co. where she is transforming the folktale The People Could Fly into Fly: The Musical.

Judy Card has a vision of a world where all people are free and empowered by their stories and where women’s truth and contributions are valued, known, learned and shared. She strives purposefully toward making that vision a reality for today and always.

Judy Card is our 2020-2022 Woman of Achievement for Vision.

Cornelia Crenshaw

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2019

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Cornelia Crenshaw

Cornelia Crenshaw was born in Millington on March 25, 1916. At the age of 5, she moved to Memphis where she lived until her death in 1994. She attended Booker T. Washington High School and LeMoyne-Owen College. One of the few African American professional women working outside the field of education, Cornelia was employed for 27 years by the Memphis Housing Authority. She was an advocate for workers’ rights to unionism. It was a stance that got her fired from the MHA. She then sued, unsuccessfully, under the new Civil Rights Bill of 1964.

After she lost that job at the age of 49, Cornelia became a full-time community activist. Noted for her stylish clothing and hats, she regularly attended City Council meetings and usually spoke. Well before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis to popularize the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike, Cornelia Crenshaw was already working to collect food and other necessities for the strikers’ families. It was she who told the union about Robert Worsham’s poem “I Am A Man,” which then became the heralded slogan of the Strike. She was the only African American woman on the strategy team headed by Rev. James Lawson. She walked in the daily protests downtown and was gassed while participating in the first march led by Dr. King.

Cornelia was well ahead of her time in recognizing institutional racism. In 1969 she protested an increase in garbage collection fees that brought no increased salary to the workers by refusing to pay her Memphis, Light, Gas, & Water bill. After MLGW turned off her utilities, she continued to live in her well-appointed home without gas or electricity for ten more years until she was forced to abandon it. Because of her protest, however, MLGW began to accept partial payments on monthly bills, thus allowing customers to spread out any unusually high monthly bills.

Cornelia Crenshaw’s long-time advocacy was officially recognized when the City Council named the Memphis Public Library Branch at 536 Vance in her honor.

Estelle Axton

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2019

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Estelle Axton

Estelle Axton co-founded Stax Records with her brother, James Stewart. The name Stax itself is a combination of STewart and AXton. Stax became renowned as a leader in soul music, rivaling Detroit and the Motown sound in the 1960’s.

Born in Middleton, TN, Estelle began her career as a schoolteacher in Memphis, married Everett Axton, raised their two children at home for ten years, then worked as a teller in a bank.

When her brother needed money to develop a record company, she persuaded her husband they should remortgage their house and joined her brother as a full partner at the newly named Stax Records in 1959. Together they bought the old Capital Theater in an African-American neighborhood now known as Soulsville, and turned it into a recording studio and a record shop. Her brother ran the recording studio and she ran the Satellite Record Shop, which attracted local talent and provided money in sparse recording times.

“The shop was a workshop for Stax Records,” she explained. “When a record would hit on another label, we would discuss what made it sell.” Musicians recalled Estelle as the one who encouraged them and sometimes made her brother sign them up.

Together with her brother she was involved in finding and promoting the careers of artists such as Rufus and Carla Thomas, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Booker T & the MGs, and Isaac Hayes, who said of her:
“Estelle was a very generous woman. She was generous with her time, with her counsel, with her advice. I think she was responsible for the racial harmony at Stax. Mrs. Axton, you didn’t feel any back-off from her, no differentiation that you were black and she was white. . . Being in a town where that attitude was plentiful, she just made you feel secure. She was like a mother to us all.”
The musicians and singers at Stax called her “Lady A.”

“Were it not for her, there’s no way Stax could have become what it became,” said David Porter, a songwriting powerhouse who wrote many Stax hits, such as Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man,” and “Hold On, I’m Coming.” “She had a positive spirit toward the acts in that community and any young kids who came in there with aspirations. There’s no way that Stax could have become Stax without the positive energy that this lady contributed,” he said.

After leaving Stax Records in 1970, she founded the Memphis Songwriters Association and co-founded the Memphis Music Association, which became the umbrella organization for all Memphis music.

The Stax Museum of American Soul Music opened in 2003, and she lived to see it, dying in 2004 at age 85. In 2007 she herself was posthumously awarded a Grammys Trustee Award, given to “individuals who, during their careers in music, have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording.”

Carol Danehower

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2019

VISION
for a woman whose sensitivity to women’s needs
led her to tremendous achievements for women:

Dr. Carol Danehower

Every day dozens of women and girls in Memphis and Shelby County endure beatings, sexual abuse, verbal abuse and emotional violence that strip them of their health, their sanity, their confidence and their capacity to study or to work. Every year 15 to 20 local women are killed by men who have claimed to love them.

Dr. Carol Danehower is committed to giving of her time, her expertise as a researcher and educator, and her passion for helping women to fulfill a vision of safety and fairness for women in their homes, at work, everywhere.

Carol is an associate professor in the Department of Management at the University Of Memphis Fogelman College Of Business. She became aware of the deadly extent of domestic violence locally and nationally as member of the board of the Memphis YWCA, a leader in DV services for over 40 years. Nominated to the Tennessee Economic Council on Women by UofM President Dr. Shirley Raines in 2007, Carol read their research on the economic impact of domestic violence and began to develop her own research into the connection between DV and the workplace.

She came to the Memphis Area Women’s Council in 2011 as a volunteer concerned about women and violence and interested in how that connection limits women’s capacity to be productive and maintain jobs or careers.

She soon created with the Women’s Council a two-hour training workshop “Violence at Home. Victims at Work. Employers Confront Domestic Violence,” a compelling program that equips employers to recognize when employees or colleagues are struggling with domestic violence – intimate partner violence – and to respond with compassion and community resources.

Carol presents the training to classes at UofM every semester and, with Deborah Clubb, has trained nearly 1,000 people in workplaces across the city — without pay and on top of her full-time job.

Carol’s route to a thriving academic career began at Hendrix College in Conway, AR, where she studied economics after a wonderful childhood on her family’s farm outside Forrest City. She got her master’s in economics from the University of Arkansas in 1978 and then was drawn to the emerging profession of personnel management and human resources. She completed her Doctorate in Business Administration in 1987 at the University of Kentucky.

She taught at Rhodes College 1986-1989. She moved to the UofM where her role also involves graduate students, older students and those from varied backgrounds. She was an administrator in the Fogelman College for 12 years, then returned to regular faculty position in 2009. Since 2015 she has been part-time teaching, including on-line courses, and part-time working in Academic Affairs on various projects.

It was Carol who initiated the effort at UofM in 2015 to address the scourge of on-campus sexual assault with the debut screening of “The Hunting Ground” documentary. She secured the powerful film about the scourge of college campus rape and led programming for it at Memphis and Jackson/Lambuth campuses. For 2019 she is giving the same leadership to securing “Roll Red Roll” about the Steubenville, OH, high school football team rape case and working with MAWC to create a special training event for local high school teachers and coaches on disclosure and consent.

Carol for years mentored and advised the campus chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management. She is greeted regularly around the city and across the Internet by former students happy to see “Dr. D.”

Carol began chairing of the Women’s Council board of directors in 2013 and continues in that capacity.

Her vision for safe, secure, productive homes and workplaces for all is critical and just. For her generous and persistent efforts toward that vision, we honor her today as Woman of Achievement for Vision 2019.

Jane H. Hooker

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2019

STEADFASTNESS
for a woman with a lifetime of achievement:

Dr. Jane Howles Hooker

Jane Hooker was a mother of three and pregnant when she entered Memphis State University in 1961. Now 81, she really has never left the university in spirit. And the change she led while there – to revive and develop intercollegiate athletics for women, to teach and inspire generations of teachers – is legendary.

It’s hard to believe now, but beginning in the 1930s to 1972 when Title 9 became the law, many American colleges and universities provided no intercollegiate athletic programs for women. While 1920 to 1930 could be considered golden years for women athletes, concern grew that young women should be discouraged from serious competition. Among many reasons, women were considered too emotional, too likely to cry or faint. So higher education ended intercollegiate sports for women.

Instead, women athletes joined the Association for Intramural Athletics for Women. This meant no school funding for team uniforms, team travel or coaches. Young women athletes would stand at the doors collecting money after boys’ games so they, too, could participate in the sports they loved. Their coaches worked for free.

Jane, a self-avowed tomboy, spent summers playing sports at Cliff Davis Park and, as a teen, competing thanks to the YWCA’s Y-Teen basketball program.

In 1956, while still at Messick High School, Jane married the love of her life, Joe Hooker. She became pregnant with their first child and hid her pregnancy until after graduation. Soon she was the mother of four.

But Jane always knew that she would go to college. And go to college she did.
When she enrolled part-time at then-Memphis State in 1961, she majored in Health, Physical Education and Recreation. With children at home, she prepared meals, checked homework and did her own before rushing off to classes. She earned a Bachelor of Science in 1968, followed by a Masters in 1969.

She played basketball and badminton, coached by her mentor and nominator the legendary Elma Roane. She was Head Coach for Women’s Volleyball from 1970-1972.

But her real love was teaching so she left coaching to make the long commute to Oxford to earn a PhD at the University of Mississippi, completed in 1988. Through that time, she continued to teach teachers at Memphis State, making sure that they understood the importance of movement for kids in the classroom and through sports and games.

Jane was always passionate about young women being able to compete in college sports. In 1969, Elma Roane, Jane and several women across the state started a Tennessee Women’s Sports Foundation. Their mission was to provide intercollegiate varsity sports for women. They succeeded. Other leadership positions included presidencies and board memberships in state and national athletic organizations.

Her interest in providing sports opportunities for children led her to accept responsibilities in AAU Junior Olympics and Special Olympics. She wrote four text books for her classes and 50 biographies for the Sports Chapter of “A Bicentennial Tribute to Tennessee Women 1979-1995.” Recipient of countless awards, she taught and held UofM administrative positions until retiring in 1998.

But retirement isn’t a word to describe Jane, who turned 81 this month. She was an adjunct for years, compiled a History of Messick High School and co-wrote a history of Cordova. And for 17 years, she and her late husband gathered and delivered food, toys, generators, and school supplies for the families of Laguna San Ignacio in Mexico.

Jane is an active member of Bethany Christian Church and has written its history. She is a proud life-time member of the University of Memphis Alumni Association and until recently could be found in the stands rooting for the Tigers. One final thing: Don’t try to beat Jane at tossing free-throws. You won’t win.

Jane Hooker thanks the YWCA for keeping sports viable for young women prior to Title 9 and Elma Roane for being her mentor. Women of Achievement thanks Jane for her steadfast life.

Maxine Starling Strawder

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2019

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the
opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Maxine Starling Strawder

Maxine was always told by her mother “Remember who you are. You are loved, you are valued and you are enriched by the people in your life.” She knew the history of her family and its struggles and understood early that she was defined by family, not situations outside of herself.

In Beckley, West Virginia, Maxine was born with very poor vision. The family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where, at age 10, Maxine saw legendary African-American dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham dance. That performance led Maxine to a life-long passion for dance.

At her request, her parents enrolled at Cleveland, Ohio’s Karamu House, one of the oldest African-American theaters in America. She exhibited great talent, always dancing without her usual Coke-bottle glasses, barely able to see the stage and other performers.

In recognition of her talent, at age 16, she was chosen to study and travel to Haiti in a program sponsored by her inspiration, Katherine Dunham.

Her parents wanted her to attend Fisk University, which had no dance program. Exhibiting further initiative, while at Fisk, Maxine worked for two years cleaning houses and then, using her savings, went to Europe, studying in Denmark and Germany. Back in the states, she worked with dancer/choreographer Bob Johnson’s Pittsburgh Black Theatre Dance Ensemble.

Maxine then returned to Cleveland and Karamu House, where she danced with several modern dance troupes while obtaining a Bachelor’s degree at Case Western Reserve. She married and had a daughter, Dawn Rebecca, at age 23, but the marriage was short-lived.

With a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Indiana at Bloomington, in 1974 she took a job with the Memphis and Shelby County Public Library and Information Center, one of the first African-American librarians in Memphis. She later became manager of the Gaston Park Branch.

But Maxine never gave up her passion. In 1973, she was one of the organizers of the First National Congress of Blacks in Dance. Maxine continued to dance, to teach dancers, and be actively involved in the Memphis arts community for the next several decades through groups such as the Harry Bryce Dance Theatre, the Memphis Black Arts Alliance, and Project: Motion. All of this in spite of her poor vision and later-diagnosed hearing problems.

While dancing with Harry Bryce, she came to be called Silverbird, a name that has graced many dance programs.
The year Maxine turned 75 she asked Project Motion if she could choreograph a piece in an annual show. Not only did they agree, they asked her to produce the entire show. 75 Rotations: Celebrating Maxine Strawder’s Passion for Dance had three sold-out performances. All profits went to the Project: Motion Maxine Strawder Dance Enrichment Scholarship at the University of Memphis.

A lifelong learner, Maxine earned a second Master’s degree in Liberal Arts, and received professional certification in diversity training and tai chi.

While in Cleveland she fought blatant housing discrimination and participated in marches and sit-ins for civil rights. In Memphis she continues to participate in social justice activities.
At the age of 80, Maxine keeps limber with dance classes and by teaching tai chi. She continues her studies at the University of Memphis as a perpetual scholar of the arts, languages, history, and world cultures.

“Dance is a universe unto itself,” she says, “It’s not only taking care of your body. It’s taking care of your mind. It’s a worldview.” Reflecting on her life, she said, “Both my mother and grandmother lived to be 96 years old, both faced many obstacles in life, and both possessed a loving fierceness. They instilled that in me.”

Women of Achievement salutes Maxine Starling Strawder who continues to take initiative to overcome obstacles and inspire others with her talent and passion.

Gabriela Salinas

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2019

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Gabriela Salinas

Gabby Salinas’ story of survival and heroic devotion has been told all over the world. She was brought to the United States from Bolivia by her father at the age of seven, unable to walk, to be treated for cancer, but the family was turned away from a leading New York hospital after they were unable to pay for her treatment.

Without specialized care, Gabby did not have long to live.

Lucky for them that actress Marlo Thomas, daughter of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital founder Danny Thomas, read about them and immediately faxed the story to Memphis. Two days later Gabby and her dad, a Bolivian Air Force pilot, were flown to Memphis courtesy of St. Jude – where no patient ever pays.

It was March 1996.

The medical team at St. Jude fought the Ewing sarcoma – pediatric bone cancer – in Gabby’s spine, helped her learn to walk again and saved her life – and not for the last time.

Gabby Salinas’ story, says WMC TV, “has plot twists worthy of a Steven Spielberg film.”

Gabby has survived cancer three times, suffered the loss of her father and younger sister in a horrific car crash, works as a scientist to discover new drugs to treat ravaging diseases and ran for the Tennessee State Senate – and she is only 30 years old!

Thirteen months after the Salinas family arrived at St. Jude, as they drove on Interstate-40 northeast of Memphis, their car crashed. Her father and sister were thrown from the car and killed. Her pregnant mother was paralyzed.

The surviving family – mother, Gabby, twin brother, toddler and infant – continued in Memphis. In 2001 Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson sponsored a bill in Congress, signed by President Bill Clinton, to grant them citizenship. Gabby was educated at St. Ann Bartlett (2003), St. Agnes Academy (2007) and Christian Brothers University (2011).

She was diagnosed twice again with cancer and again was treated at St. Jude – in 2003 and 2007. In 2010, still a college student, she joined the St. Jude Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics. She also helped establish “Danny’s Dream Team,” former St. Jude patients who run races that raise funds for St. Jude in honor of founder Danny Thomas. In 2010 this woman who once lost ability to walk participated in her first half-marathon to raise money for the hospital.

Acutely aware of the urgent need for access to health care and medical insurance, Gabby lobbied in Nashville for expansion of Medicaid after the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. She watched helplessly as her state senator ignored his own Republican governor in shooting down the effort. She later saw the rural hospital that had treated her injured family members close.

It all sparked her political awakening which led her to run in 2018 for her state senator’s seat in Senate District 31: Cordova, Germantown, east Shelby County and Hickory Hill. She defeated two opponents to become the Democratic nominee, facing a nine-year incumbent in a solidly-Republican district.

Gabby became the target of $369,000 in negative TV, radio and direct mail ads in a fear-mongering campaign funded by huge companies and a conservative political action committee, aided by Tennessee’s lieutenant governor. The ads painted Gabby as a dangerous radical and featured images of masked men representing criminal immigrants.

When Election Day ended, the incumbent had only 1,520 votes more than Gabby.

After almost a year of campaigning, she has returned to writing her thesis in Pharmaceutical Sciences for the University of Kentucky.

Gabby is a true hero. She has certainly been tested and her spirit shown – in print, television and online – as a heroic model over and over again. We salute Gabby Salinas as our Woman of Achievement for Heroism 2019.

Rachel Coats Greer

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2019

DETERMINATION
for a woman who solved a glaring problem despite
widespread inertia, apathy or ignorance around her:

Rachel Coats Greer

In 1958, Rachel’s father started Rachel’s Flowers, a small florist near the University of Memphis. In 1997, the business moved to 2486 Poplar near Hollywood, on the edge of Binghamton, the geographic heart of the city. The neighborhood behind the shop suffered from a lack of jobs and businesses. This resulted in crime, poverty and hopelessness.

After the move, Rachel Coats, working in the shop that bears her name, answered a knock at the back door. A young boy asked for a part time job to buy clothes and school supplies. She initially said no but he kept coming. She finally agreed to hire him. The next day he brought a friend. Then three. Then more. She said yes to them all.

As she got to know them, she realized they needed more than money. She started tutoring them, buying cakes for birthdays and helping with school clothes. Her parents and late husband Harry Greer worked with her.

She began mobilizing friends, family and employees to volunteer their time to mentor and tutor neighborhood kids. Her church, Central Christian Church, provided support.

In 2002, Rachel’s Kids, Inc. became a non-profit. The mission: Provide opportunities and improved quality of life for the children of Binghamton. The method: Call Rachel.

In 2003, Rachel and Harry moved their home to Binghamton and opened their door. Mondays and Tuesdays would find 25 kids there, most with tutors recruited from their church, their friends, or nearby Rhodes College. They took the kids to Tigers’ games, to medical appointments, sent them to camp. Rachel shopped at thrift stores to help with school clothes.

Rachel’s Kids, Inc. is not a calendar of grant-funded programs. It is a relationship with families. The nonprofit depends on donations from individuals and support from Rachel’s Flowers.
Rachel does what is needed as it is needed.

She never knows when the phone rings what the problem will be, but if possible, she’ll find a solution. If it requires money, she’ll spend it. She says that just as the bank account is getting low, funds arrives. Her mother, who lived with Rachel, slept in her tennis shoes because she never knew where they’d go when they got a call.

Help with school? Tutors are hired. Need food? It is delivered. Transportation? It is arranged. If there is domestic violence or another need for safe haven, it is found. If it’s advice or an opinion, Rachel doesn’t hesitate. Her kids know they can tell her anything.

And once a Rachel’s Kid, always a Rachel’s Kid.

More than 300 kids have been helped by Rachel and her volunteers. Rachel believes that it is not her place to judge actions taken by others, that she is there to help those who ask in whatever way she can. For older kids that may mean, cell phones, cars, childcare for their kids, or help with a college application.

Now kids are growing up and giving back.

Rachel constantly reminds her kids to believe in themselves and not to allow their circumstances to define their future.

A long-time customer says, “Rachel is a shining light of hope in a neighborhood where there are growing opportunities but still devastating challenges. She is a mentor, a counselor, a business partner, a problem solver, a go-to person and a humble servant leader for this neighborhood.”

Sometimes Rachel wonders if she’s made a difference. The many little Rachels and Haleys living in Binghamton named for Rachel and her daughter say yes! Women of Achievement says yes. Rachel’s determination continues to make a difference in the lives of kids in Binghamton.