Women's History Month

This episode features interviews with Geena Clonan, founding president of the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame, and Colette Anderson, executive director of the Connecticut Women’s Consortium, which provides gender-informed and trauma-responsive training to behavior health professionals. In March we celebrate the women who have helped build a fairer, more just society. After you listen to this episode, we encourage you to read the Proclamation on Women's History Month, 2024 put out by the White House on whitehouse.gov and spend time on the website womenshistorymonth.gov which is hosted by the Library of Congress and their partners.

Transcript

Michael Pierry: Hello, and welcome to the Hamden Library Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Pierry. In this episode, we have two great interviews for you in recognition of Women's History Month. Ryan Keeler spoke to Geena Clonan, founding president of the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame, and Colette Anderson, executive director of the Connecticut Women's Consortium, which provides gender informed and trauma responsive training to behavior health professionals.

In March, we celebrate the women who have helped build a fairer, more just society. After you listen to this episode, we encourage you to read the proclamation on Women's History Month 2024, put out by the White House on WhiteHouse.gov. And spend time on the website womenshistorymonth.gov, which is hosted by the Library of Congress and their partners.

Ryan Keeler: Okay, joining us today is Geena Clonan. She is the founding president of the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame. Hi, Geena.

Geena Clonan: Hi, Ryan. How are you today? 

Ryan Keeler: I am great. Thank you so much for joining us.

Geena Clonan: My pleasure. 

Ryan Keeler: We are very excited to hear from you and we would like to have you introduce yourself to start out.

Geena Clonan: Well, my name is Geena Clonan, as you said, founding president of the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame, which was founded not only by an incredible group of women who work together, but by three important organizations in Connecticut. The first being the Connecticut Forum, which I hope you are all familiar with. The second being Connecticut Public Television, which we all know and love. And the third being Hartford College for Women, which is now part of the University of Hartford's Women's Initiative. 

So during that time, 30 years ago, I was co-managing director at the Connecticut Forum, along with Doris and Richard Sugarman. And in the first year of our Bushnell on-stage presentations, the last show of that year was "American Women in Focus: Breaking New Ground." On that stage was Faye Waddleton of Planned Parenthood; Sarah Brady, who was pushing the Brady Bill for gun control; Alan Goodman, a journalist from the Boston Globe; Eileen Krauss, president of, well, at that time it was Shawmut, but today we speak of it as Bank of America, one of the highest ranking women in banking in the nation. And it was moderated by Deborah Norville. So the forum has a history of taking the onstage presentation, which is most often of a national and international interest of a subject very relevant, and breaking that down to something on the community level.

So we always looked for ways to reach the Connecticut community in ways that connected us to that theme. So we thought, well, here we are in Connecticut, one of the original colonies, surely something has been done to recognize the achievements of women over our 300 years of history. And surprise, surprise, nothing had been done.

So we set out in partnership with Hartford College faculty to discover the stories of women of achievement in Connecticut. And it is, to this day, mind blowing to me that there are so many accomplished women from Connecticut. And I mean, we know generally we'd like to think of us all as accomplished, but women who actually changed not only the state, but the nation and the world.

And we continue to discover those stories today. And part of that, Ryan, is because women's history has not been recorded as much as we would like to. The stories have not been told. Much of our contributions are undiscovered. So it's been a pleasure. And an educational experience to discover these stories and share them.

Ryan Keeler: Absolutely. And as you mentioned, you were the founding president of the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame. So let's get into that. Let's talk about you founding this organization and its history and purpose. 

Geena Clonan: Well, as I said, it began as an outreach program. And that first year at the Wadsworth Athenaeum, we inducted 45 women over 300 years of Connecticut's history. And as an outreach program of the Forum, they're meant to be purposeful in the time that they are and related to the show.

But much to our surprise, Ryan, teachers and students clamored for more information. Teachers asked for curriculum guidelines. "How can I bring women's history into the classroom? How can I expose my students to these stories that are so meaningful and are not found in the books we find in our schools?"

So that was encouraging and also daunting, thinking of a task that we would continue to, every year, look for women of achievement, celebrate their story, preserve their legacy, and use it to educate and inspire young women and girls. That is our mission and vision. That's how we started. And 30 years later, that is what we do. 

So what does that mean? That means that every year we recognize women at an induction ceremony. And it's an incredible annual event. It's held at the Bushnell. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of people attend to in honor of these women in support of the organization, because the stories that are told are then turned into educational programming for K-12. That programming is in the classroom, on the road, and online.

So we even reach beyond Connecticut borders because the women's stories are so interesting and can be used to educate and inspire in any context in any place around the globe.

Ryan Keeler: Excellent. I was just going to ask you what the organization is doing today and you kind of covered that there. So that's great and prior to the interview, I had gone on the website and perused through the inductees.

So let's talk about that a little bit, how people can find these on your website. They're listed by category as well as by name. So let's talk a little bit about the inductees in the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame. 

Geena Clonan: Well, as March is Women's History Month, and we are very busy in March, and we celebrate in many different ways, but I'd also like to touch upon last month, which is Black History Month, because so many of the stories that left uncovered are women of color.

So, for instance, last year we inducted Lisa Cortes, Emmy Award- winning filmmaker right here from Milford, Connecticut, and some of you may recall one of her greatest movies, "Precious," but she's also done documentaries one specifically called "All In: The Fight for Democracy," which is very pertinent to many of our national discussions today.

She what's interesting about the Hall is that not only are we surprised by the stories we discover, but the women who we discover are so surprised by the honor. Because it's a different kind of honor. It isn't like some halls that induct and there's a ceremony and then that's it. So then that's the induction.

It's a big presentation and it may be fun and inspiring, but it doesn't last. This lasts. When we honor a woman, we are saying to her: your story is so valuable, your legacy is so incredible that we aim to keep it in perpetuity, to promote it, and to use it to make a difference in the lives of young women and girls. And even women of my age, and I'm a Boomer, or any generation, remain inspired by the stories of these women. Connecticut women. 

Ryan Keeler: Yes, absolutely, and I'm glad you mentioned Black History Month as well, because that is important. And let's get into other events, happenings, things coming up that the Hall of Fame is has in the works.

Geena Clonan: Well, before we do that, I think because we did mention Lisa Cortes, we might mention some other inductees. And as you said, we've inducted over a hundred, so we hope that your listeners will go online and see for yourselves these incredible women of achievement, accomplishment who continue -- the contemporary women continue to achieve, and the historical women, their achievements continue to resonate in the classroom, as I said, on the road, and online.

But on the heels of last month's Super Bowl and all the attention that's been given Swelce, let's talk about Donna Lopiano, who created the Women's Sports Foundation, who was instrumental in the advancement of Title IX as it related to sports. She's a Connecticut woman, and she has made such a difference in the life of women and girls who play sports, not just in Connecticut, but all across the nation, and not just young girls, but college athletes, professional athletes across the board. She made a difference in sports.

And our own Indra Nooyi, who was the former president and CEO of PepsiCo, one of the few women to rise to such a high level in American commerce, particularly in the C-suite, which you know, has very few women still to this day. We are underrepresented, both in business and in politics.

And Indra Nooyi has made a big difference and continues to do so. For instance, on the heels of the pandemic, she was asked by Governor Lamont to help reopen Connecticut. To help businesses, to help communities across the state to rebuild after such a difficult time for all of us. And just this year in 2024, she is chairing the National Women's Hall of Fame induction ceremony in New York. So the women that we honor just never stop going.

Ryan Keeler: Excellent. Yes, it's it's really great to have these examples and I really hope that people go on the website and look through this list. I think they'll be surprised at some of the names they might recognize 

Geena Clonan: And Ryan, may I add to that, to your listeners -- educators, by all means, go on and see the resources and tools that we offer you throughout the year. We have very few major events in a calendar year because every day we are working with programming to get them to you. We have talks on the road where any one of our educated staff about women's history can come to you, to your business, to your clubs, to your associations, and talk about women's history in general. We can talk about specific inductees. We can tell you stories that you've never heard. 

So we are, we're always working to educate and inspire and to promote women's history. We are a women's history vault. And women's history, again, is lagging way behind history as a field. We still have not been able to get a National Women's History Museum on the Mall in Washington.

And yet many minorities are represented and their history showcased. So there's a lot to work toward and a lot of reasons why we're working for.

Ryan Keeler: Yes, definitely. And so what is the date again for this year's induction ceremony?

Geena Clonan: Our induction ceremony this year will be October 22nd at the Bushnell in Hartford, Connecticut and our theme this year is "Fashion: From the Runway to the C-suite" and I cannot mention the nominees at this moment because we are just in the process of confirming them all and arranging for their videographies and all the things that go into it, but you'll hear more about that in Women's History Month.

Ryan Keeler: Excellent, and so the last thing I wanted to get to was to help inform people on how they can contribute. How can they help out the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame?

Geena Clonan: Thank you so much. Might I backtrack one moment because I mentioned that we don't have a lot of big events, but we now have two annual events that we're very proud of. Of course, the induction ceremony always held in Hartford. But we started a program just a year before the pandemic in Fairfield, Connecticut, so that we could also have participation along the shoreline and bring a lot of what we do in central Connecticut down to the shoreline. And we created a show called "Generations: A Conversation Between," and that's exactly what it is, a conversation between four or five generations.

So you will have Gen Z, Gen X, Millennials, Boomers, maybe even the Greatest Generation, a moderated conversation on stage about the most relevant issues facing women and girls today. Our first year, it was entitled "The F Word," where we talked about feminism and what it meant to each of those women representing their generation and their unique experience.

The second one was in 2020, unfortunately had to be postponed, but 2020 was the centennial of suffrage. So we were celebrating a hundred years of suffrage and women's rights. And then following that, we did climate crisis, women and the climate crisis, where we talked about what is going on, what is clearly one of the most important subjects of the day. And women and girls are disproportionately affected by climate crisis around the world. 

So, it's interesting, extremely interesting, I think, for audiences to hear what we think from different generations and at different stages in our lives. So, I urge you to go online. They are videotaped and uploaded. Again, another educational tool, not only for our own experience, but for teachers and and children advocates and women and girl advocates to tune in and present this to your constituency. There's a lot to learn and a lot to celebrate.

Ryan Keeler: Yes, absolutely. So, now why don't we inform people on what they can do how they can contribute to the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame and the work that you're doing?

Geena Clonan: Well, most importantly, you can contribute your, as much as you can, as little or a lot in funding. We are a 501(c)(3). We do not have an endowment. We do not have guaranteed funds year in and year out. Every year we start and we raise the money to do what we do. We are tiny but mighty in our impact. We are just a few women and on our staff we have an executive director, we have a director of development, we have a managing director, and we have a director of education.

Because that's what we do. We bring these stories to women and girls across the state. And as I said, the nation and the globe. So if you go on to https://www.cwhf.org, there'll be a button for donating. And we really appreciate, as I said, no gift is too small because every year we have to raise these funds.

Secondly, we would love to hear who you'd like to see in the Hall of Fame. Nominations are accepted throughout the year. Again, on our website, you can find the nomination form, you can find the criteria for nomination, and you can nominate a woman of your choice. We consider all nominations and we take them very seriously, not only with our staff and our board, but we have a group of consulting scholars who look at these nominations seriously and evaluate the contribution to women's history.

You can volunteer! We're always looking for help with our events, for help with different projects that we do each year, we have talks on the road, we'd love to have women who would like to speak to groups on our behalf. There are many ways you can become a part of the Hall of Fame, and each way is so valuable to us and much appreciated.

Ryan Keeler: Thank you so much for being here. This has been great, and I really hope that people will find the website, go check it out, be aware. I know I learned a lot in preparing to talk to you today. And this is really great. Thank you so much. 

Geena Clonan: Thank you, Ryan. And remember www.cwhf.org. This has been my pleasure. 

Ryan Keeler: Thank you.

Joining us now on the podcast is Colette Anderson. She's the executive director of the Connecticut Women's Consortium. How you doing Colette? 

Collette Anderson: Good, good. Nice to meet you and to talk with you.

Ryan Keeler: Excellent. It's great to have you here. So we'll start out by just having you introduce yourself a little bit.

Collette Anderson: So, my name's Collette Anderson, as you said, and I've worked here at the Connecticut Women's Consortium for the past 12 years.

I am a licensed clinical social worker, and for the better half of my career, I worked for the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services starting out at their state hospital in Middletown, and then ending my career as CEO of the Services in Western Connecticut. And so I came to the consortium as I left state service and really worked to expand the services that the consortium offered around training behavioral health staff on clinical models that would best serve their clients.

And that's how I ended up here. I also worked with them on the trauma initiative over the years. So while I was working for the state, I was aware of the consortium, and I was aware of the great work they were doing, and it just fell into place nicely that as I was leaving one job, this one opened, and I came here, and I've really quite enjoyed being here these past 12 years.

Ryan Keeler: Great. You kind of answered my second question there with how you got involved. 

Collette Anderson: Well, I can give you a little more detail. So when I was working for the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services I applied to be considered, the organization I was working with at the time was Western Connecticut Mental Health Network, and we applied to be the center of excellence around trauma work.

We were working with a lot of individuals who were in recovery, and what we realized that when we utilize some of the evidence-based treatment models that are out there for trauma the individuals were showing much improvement, which they weren't showing by just treating them with psychotropic medications and the traditional treatments that we had.

So we realized that the trauma treatments had a significant impact, and then we became interested in understanding what it would be like to have a trauma-informed and a gender-responsive organization. And so I'd have to say starting from there I started to work on how to make agencies in Connecticut who provide behavioral health trauma-informed and gender-responsive, and I developed a toolkit that I brought and expanded upon when I was here at the consortium. And we've trained over 40 agencies that go through like a several-year initiative that we have these components to. Ad so that's how I became interested. We also have a newsletter called "Trauma Matters," and I was writing articles for them, and I still have that newsletter that we publish quarterly, and all the back issues are on our website, so people can actually go into our website and, you know, search for a topic and you can search and it'll bring up the issues that have information about that particular thing.

For example, last year we did a special issue on gambling. Gambling's a hot topic in Connecticut with more legalized gambling happening and more youth doing, you know, getting involved in gambling. So we spent a lot of time talking about the trauma of gambling. People think of gambling as kind of like a sports and betting kind of thing, but for people who are addicted, it's a severe problem and it falls into the addiction category. So we started to work on making sure the public was more aware. 

And we will pick a specialized topic like that and highlight it in our "Trauma Matters." I think we did an issue on healing arts in terms of like yoga and breath body work and the kinds of things that you can do in addition to therapy.

So we're trying to have our clinicians in Connecticut who are working with our disabled know and be more well rounded than just traditional talk therapy. 

Ryan Keeler: And one of the things that I wanted to clarify for the listeners is what would you say the Connecticut Women's Consortium does?

Collette Anderson: So we are one of the primary trainers of the behavioral health system of care in terms of bringing treatment models to clinicians, and we focus primarily, we started out focusing primarily on women, and then we realized that women's services aren't going to get completely better if we don't address the gender issues and some of the dynamics of what's happening in relationships, like couples work. We have some specialty treatments we brought in on helping men recover. If a woman is living with a man who's an alcoholic and he doesn't get care, then her life isn't going well.

So, we try to look at it more well rounded. When we first started, we were funded by this organization called Fighting Back in New Haven. And Fighting Back wanted to reduce situations where women were giving birth to babies that were addicted. So they were using drugs, the babies were being born addicted, and we wanted to stop that problem, and we got some funding from the legislature and that's how the consortium started. So it was over 25 years ago that we started just as a grassroots piece in New Haven.

Ryan Keeler: So, why don't we talk about some of the initiatives like Every Woman Connecticut, Trauma and Gender Initiative, those kind of things. 

Geena Clonan: So Every Woman Connecticut is a product that has to do with women answering the basic question of "Do you want to be pregnant? Do you want to get pregnant?"

And really helping women decide about their body and their intention. And what we realized is that a lot of women will go to doctor appointments and go into psychiatric treatment, and no one really talks about sexuality that much and talks about, you know, what do you want to do? Do you want to have a child?

And so that whole initiative rolled out in Connecticut, I would say it's been possibly about 10 years. There's a consultant who lives in Hamden, her name is Mary Jane Carey, and she was the leader of this Every Woman Connecticut product. Mary Jane was working with the March of Dimes, and the March of Dimes wanted to actually fund training where we could bring Planned Parenthood to the table and really teach the treaters in our community about talking about birth control and talking about things that weren't being talked about. So, we have these, like, pregnancy kits and we have the clinicians who are normally doing, you know, psychotherapy, group therapy, and those sort of things, learning how to talk more openly with the people that they're treating about whether or not they want to have a child and if not, what to do to prevent having a child.

So Every Woman Connecticut is really about maternal health and really learning how to have women be empowered about whether they want to have children or not have children and if they don't, what to do to not get pregnant. 

Now the other initiative you asked me about, the Trauma and Gender Initiative, so that's the piece of work that has to do with -- The majority of people who have mental illness or substance abuse problems, if you take a look at their history, it all begins with some trauma that happened in their childhood.

And we're learning more and more about the effects of childhood trauma on individuals that lead to these disorders as they become adults. There's a study that was the ACEs study, and the ACEs study was done out in California for people who were going for medical appointments and they were trying to lose weight and this doctor started to ask them questions about why once they lost the weight did they put it back on.

And he discovered that the women who were gaining weight rapidly had to do with, once they lost the weight men were approaching them. And they wanted to go on a date. And the women in a way to protect themselves, began eating again and got massive so that no one would come and approach them. So they were using this eating disorder as a strategy because of the trauma of sexual abuse as a child.

And so we started to make these links about the different adversities that children go through and how it affects their lives as they're adults. Once we understand that, and we make sure that medical providers, not just behavioral health providers, understand that, we can get more folks into care and provide them with evidence based treatment models that'll help them in their recovery.

And we start to see a big shift in how people are doing when we use that approach. The gender side of it has to do with you know, initially, The work we were doing was more focused specifically on women and as we started to do the trauma work, realizing that, you know, trauma affects men too, and so we can't leave the men out.

And so we started to look at treatment models for men and, and, and we looked at evidence based treatment models that were brief treatment, long term treatment and things they can do in outpatient, things they could do in inpatient, and started to bring some of those models into Connecticut as well.

So we're often bringing in national speakers who could come to Connecticut or are in Connecticut to talk about these treatment models that are going to help the people in our communities. That's great. Great stuff. I hope people go visit your website and Look up some of these initiatives and learn a little bit more about them.

And I also wanted to ask about some accomplishments, maybe something that you're proud of. Well, when we first got started, we were like, okay, we're a little grassroots organization in Connecticut. And how can we like, get some of the things we're doing out on a regional and national level. So we started to do some work to bring some of the work we were doing.

And our goal was to be able to put on some national events and we have succeeded. And we've. Put on a National Trauma and Recovery Conference the next one's scheduled for this coming October and it's going to be in Bristol at the Bristol Hotel, we, we have had a an interesting journey with national we've even brought in some folks from international.

So people have come from England, people have come from Africa. We've gotten people from around the world to come to some of our events that are a larger scale events. That's great. And speaking of events, you have an event coming up. So. Yes. So, one of the things we've been doing, we started to do the International Women's Day because it's, it is an international, again, event.

And so March 8th is International Women's Day, and we will have an event that's on site here. We actually just ordered a red carpet. We're going to have a red carpet entrance. We're going to have some keynote speakers. Someone from New Haven who's well known, Dr. Sherelle Bellamy, is the keynote speaker that day.

We also have a Wednesday RIM. IFRAC and Dr. Lyles. Dr. Lyles is a gynecologist in Hamden and she's going to talk about you know, the, the healthy aspects of making sure that you're taking care of yourself. Sherelle's going to focus more on spirituality and spirituality health and how that helps with, you know, we're, we're always looking at the total human being and, and not focusing.

Sometimes when people think about people with mental illness, they Get so focused on the diagnosis and the disorder, they forget that the person is a whole person, and if we want people to recover, we need to look at all aspects. So, March 8th from 9 to 3 here at the consortium we are going, we got lunch sponsored by Eli's, which is a major coup.

They haven't done that ever before for us. We got the connection from Middletown, who's going to We're going to pay for our first keynote speaker, so that was really cool. We'll have some vendors. And we're going to have some healing art, so people can experience like some Reiki, some sound healing, and some of these other treatment modalities that are adjunct treatments that we think people should be offering.

And so people who come to the event could actually come upstairs and try some of these things out. Excellent. That sounds like a great event. One of the, one of the last things I wanted to ask was how can people contribute? How can people support the Connecticut Women's Consortium? So we have on our website a donate button if somebody wanted to make a donation.

When people come to our events, We collect food for the Hamden Food Bank. So we just made a delivery there today. So our guests like to give. So when they come, they bring food and we're glad we're able to resume that during COVID, everything went virtual and we couldn't collect food. So we're collecting food again.

Basically we do, you know, we participate in what a lot of nonprofits do. We participate in the Great Give. But the majority of our funding comes from the state of Connecticut, the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, and then we have some, some other federally funded grants that come here.

And so mainly by contributing. The other thing I thought of as I was talking about the website is we have a lot of free materials there. So we talked about the Trauma Matters Newsletter, but we also have a YouTube. YouTube channel, and we also have a podcast station, so we have all of that connected to our website.

So those are free resources that people could check out. They want to go to the YouTube channel. They can see some brief trainings. They're usually 90 minutes or less, and they're all free. So there's a lot of material out there. Excellent. We'll try to link those in when we put the podcast out. Was there any other events or things going on that you wanted to talk about?

Well, you know, we put out a, we put out a quarterly catalog and so I was just kind of looking at what's coming up in March because we're already halfway through this month. We have a an interesting topic, Lifestyle Medicine and Behavioral Epigenetics in the Intergenerational Story of Hope for Living Well in Recovery.

It's the first time we're doing it. We have this guy, Don Shirling, who's coming in from Massachusetts. He's a great. And that's the first time we're offering that topic. We have attachment and trauma. We have some couples trainings that are going on and we have an evidence based treatment model for trauma, which is seeking safety that's happening on, onsite on the 25th of March.

So those are some of the things that are coming up in the following month. 

Ryan Keeler: Well, thank you so much for joining us, Colette. This has been great. 

Geena Clonan: Thank you. 

Michael Pierry: That's all we have for you this month on the podcast. We'll see you next time.