Marching On: An Interview with the Coordinators of the SLO Women’s March

10,000 in San Luis Obispo

500,000 in California

4 million in the United States

5 million around the world

On January 21, what started as a haphazardly organized Facebook event became the largest march of its kind in history. What should’ve taken months to organize came together in a matter of weeks. On February 1, the Wire had the opportunity to sit down with Dawn Addis, one of the coordinators of the Women’s March in San Luis Obispo, and talk about what compelled her to take part in such a historical event, what she hopes for the future and who helped her along the way.

NOV 8

Addis, who works with English Language Development programs in the local San Luis Obispo school district, was one of the many upset with the results of the election. As someone who works with immigrant families and children, she could understand why so many Americans were feeling scared and helpless.

“When you’re sitting across the table from someone and they’re telling you how scared they are, or hearing what kids are going through, whether it’s locally or different places in the nation, that has been very painful for me,” Addis said. “I was trying to figure out what my path is, what I wanted to do, how to share my voice, [when I] saw the Women’s March in Washington.” Unsure of how safe it would be to march at the Capitol, she started thinking about having one in SLO. 

As it turned out, quite a few people were interested. 

Political Science junior Ellie Lupo and Child Development senior Winnie Chen would turn out to be two of 10,000 women and men who marched in SLO. But they didn’t just participate in the march— they were an integral part of organizing it. The week after the election, they applied to become interns for the SLO Democratic Party.

“I think I can speak for both of us when I say we were pretty upset and were just trying to figure out how to take action,” Lupo said. “You’re just sitting there like ‘what next?’ I can’t just sit around and cry anymore. We wanted to get involved in the community.” 

That was how a small group of women in SLO started one of the biggest marches in history. 

NOV 12

“Nice girls don’t change the world.” 

When Addis started organizing the march with her friend Jen Ford, comments like these were one of the biggest struggles she faced. The Women’s March was to be a non-violent, non-partisan march, but that drew a lot of criticism because many people believed that it was impossible not to pick a side. 

“At the very get-go we really, as a group, had to do some soul searching about what we were for,” Addis said. “It’s about your intentionality. Do you want to put your energy into what you hate, or do you want to put your energy into where you want to be?”

The march in SLO, like the National March in Washington, followed the six principles of Kingian non-violence, which encouraged staying true to messages and ideas rather than attacking people. Addis acknowledges that following these principles is difficult in a time when people are feeling threatened and scared, but also argues that it takes more courage to stay hopeful. 

Though the march was non-partisan, the SLO Democratic Party played a large part in organizing the event. Chen and Lupo, as two interns, took roles as outreach coordinators and contacted different organizations at Cal Poly to get them involved in the march. SLO Solidarity, the Multicultural Center and the Women in Gender Studies Department were a few of the many organizations that had booths set up during the march. 

The interns had been given a script for the e-mails they sent out, which stated that people should bring signs that represent what they are marching for rather than what they’re standing up against. 

“I think that that sums it up really well that we’re looking towards the future and not looking at all the things that are pushing us down in this moment,” Chen said. 

JANUARY 21 

Ten weeks later, what was supposed to be a march of 300 people became a march of 10,000. 

8:00 AM

A million things were running through Addis’ mind— the kind of things you ask yourself when you organize an event that was meant to be for 300 people: Where are the police I’m supposed to be coordinating with? Are people going to be safe? 

These were only slightly different from the questions you ask yourself when 10,000 people end up showing up: Oh, my god. Are there enough bathrooms? 

9:00 AM 

Lupo and Chen were checking in volunteers at Action Alley. The booths and tents were set up across from each other in a line, where many Cal Poly organizations and other non-profits were talking to marchers. 

“I thought it was amazing because all these women and men felt passionate about this cause and took up their morning to help out,” Lupo said. “Every single volunteer spot was taken, and we had people coming up and asking if there were still spots to volunteer.” 

10:45 AM 

The police were unable to hold back the surging crowd. The weather app had said it wasn’t going to rain that morning, but it had already started drizzling. A young boy in a blue parka held up a sign that said “Feminist in training.” Under a canopy of umbrellas, the blocks between Santa Rosa and Osos were packed with marchers.

“Show me what democracy looks like!” “This is what democracy looks like!” 

11:20 AM 

The heavens opened up. 

“We were standing at a standstill outside Peet’s, and it suddenly started pouring buckets,” Chen said. “It was unreal. Everyone was screaming and whooping and hollering, and I’m getting poured on, every single inch of my body is drenched. But in [that] moment, I feared nothing.” 

Watching as people of all shapes, sizes and colors danced and sang in the rain, Addis came to the conclusion that, yes, nice girls could change the world. 

FEBRUARY 1

When The Wire sat down with Dawn Addis a few weeks afterward, she discussed what the lasting effects of the march were, and what she has been doing since then.

Addis felt that the march garnered so much attention because it wasn’t “nasty”; it wasn’t spiteful or vengeful. Instead, the march gave people something to look back on when they are feeling alone or at a loss. It gave them hope. 

“I think it drew people in that aren’t used to taking action, and they aren’t used to getting out and getting in the streets and voicing their opinion. I think we engaged a lot of people who wouldn’t have come to an angry protest,” Addis said. 

While many people look back at the march fondly and with a sense of unity, Addis is looking back and wondering who wasn’t there and why. Looking toward the future, Addis hopes to engage those people and build partnerships. 

Winnie Chen, as someone who had not only participated in the march but also helped organize it, had her own thoughts on the issue. “I do have to take into consideration the demographics [of SLO], but I do agree that it could be more well attended,” she said. “As a woman of color, I can see why a person of color would refrain from attending protests. I think that we’re socialized in such a way that we’re inferior to the white person, and our voices may not be as valued. I don’t want to generalize either, but maybe some of them would feel discouraged or feel like their voice doesn’t matter, which isn’t true at all.”

Both interns felt that participating in the march left them more hopeful than they had felt since Nov. 8. 

“For the community in general, obviously it connected our little town in SLO to a wider national movement that’s happening,” Lupo said. “I went home and looked at the news and saw the march in D.C. and I almost felt like I was there. All these women came out across the country, and we were together that day.” 

More than anything, unity was the biggest legacy of the Women’s March. Looking forward, Dawn, Winnie and Ellie will continue to work towards a more unified and inclusive community in SLO to ensure that the legacy of the march remains a persistent reminder of what a group of ‘nice girls’ can accomplish.

This story was originally published on The WIB Wire on February 12, 2017.

Entreprenurial Profile: Bozoma Saint John

When a company is in the process of hiring a potential employee, they go through a number of predictable steps. They look at her resume, her CV, contact her previous employers. And during the interview, they’ll ask some variation of, “What have you accomplished in the past?” and “What can you contribute to our company?” Or, to summarize in a single question, “Why should we hire you?”

For Bozoma Saint John, these questions were probably irrelevant. They should have been “What haven’t you done?” and “Why wouldn’t we  hire you?” Here is just a small list of her accolades, not including the high-ranking positions listed on her LinkedIn. 

1. Named Executive of the Year at Billboard’s Women in Music Awards 
2. First recipient of the Rockstar Award from Adcolor 
3. Named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People 
4. Inducted into the American Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Achievement 
5. First Black woman to be onstage at the Apple Developers’ Conference (2016)

Numerous news articles hail Saint John as a “unicorn”, as she is one of a handful of black female C-suite executives in the tech industry. Her life has always been categorized by change and taking risks. She was born in Ghana, but fled for political asylum to Colorado Springs after a coup-d’etat in her native country. Growing up “different,” she learned to make friends through her extensive knowledge of pop culture. That same passion for pop is what got her to where she is today. 

Saint John studied English and African American studies at Wesleyan University, and was preparing to go to medical school once she graduated, but took a year off. In that year, everything changed. While she was working at a temp agency in New York, she was hired by Spike Lee’s advertising agency, Spike DDB, as an assistant. There she worked on ads with high-profile clients, like the 2002 Pepsi ad with Beyonce. 

In 2005, Saint John was hired by PepsiCo. She helped arrange multi-million endorsement deals with celebrities like Eminem and Nicki Minaj. She secured five different deals with Beyonce, including her half-time performance at the 2013 Super Bowl. Back then, that deal was the highlight of her career. 

Later that same year, her husband passed away from cancer. She was left to raise a four year-old daughter. At what was probably the most difficult part of her life thus far, Saint John picked herself up, dusted herself off, and looked to the future. She found it in the music streaming industry. When she received an offer from Beats Music founder Dr. Dre, she took a leap of faith and accepted the position as the head of global marketing. And when Apple acquired Beats, she moved up the ranks and took the position of head of global consumer marketing for Apple Music, working on ads featuring big names like Kerry Washington, Drake and Taylor Swift. In a market where competitors like Spotify already have an upper hand, making Apple Music a big name was no easy feat. According to a Billboard article, the streaming service had received over 20 million paid subscribers since Saint John was hired. 

Working for Apple was Saint John’s chance to combine her love for storytelling with business, which is something she had wanted to do since she majored in English. As a woman in her high-profile position, she used her voice to positively influence the mainstream media perception of people of color. 

But despite all these accomplishments, the job that Saint John most recently accepted is what many fear is a fruitless one: Uber’s chief brand officer. In this position, Saint John will have to not only fix the internal culture at Uber, but also change the way the company is perceived by the general public. With the number of problems that Uber is having right now, many believe that the company should be left for dead.

Saint John, however, feels differently. The New York Times did a profile on Saint John and asked her a question about the challenges of her new job, to which she replied,“I don’t see a difference between the evolution of where the music industry was going and how to evolve people’s listening habits and, now, how to evolve people’s feelings around ride sharing and Uber.”

In an interview with Glamour, she relays the impact she wishes to impart on the company: “There’s no more exciting moment for me as a brand strategist than a turnaround…We want to make sure women feel empowered, safe, and excited about their work. And being a change agent means being fearless. Uber will never be the same after I leave.” 

As a young teen who had just moved from Ghana, she stood out for many reasons back in her high school in Colorado; the color of her skin, her hair, her clothes. Today she stands out because of her bold, fearless personality, her willingness to take risks, her ability to be her whole self unabashedly, and her passion for her work. As she blazes a trail of success, she leaves it open for countless women after her. Bozoma Saint John is the first of many. 
The original story was published on <em>The WIB Wire</em> on October 8, 2017.

Meet Dina Habib Powell, The Woman Behind 10,000 Others

“We left our homeland so you could pursue your dreams—as long as you’re a lawyer, a doctor, or an engineer.”

This is a joke many immigrant children are familiar with, and Dina Habib Powell was no stranger to it. Powell was born in Cairo, Egypt, and moved to Austin, Texas with her parents when she was four. Growing up, her hummus and falafel lunches, and inability to speak English, made her feel out of place. Years later, her Arabic descent is what made her stand out. With her initiative and willpower, Powell has become one of the most influential women in the world.

After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Powell was offered an internship with former Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. At 29 years old, she became the youngest ever person to direct the Presidential Personnel Office under the Bush Administration. In 2007, over a decade after she started working in the White House, Powell took her experience and ambition to Goldman Sachs as the managing director of Global Corporate Engagement. She then quickly rose up to became president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, where she did her most impactful work.

At Goldman Sachs, Powell dedicated herself to running the firm’s global philanthropic efforts, including 10,000 Women, an initiative launched in 2008 that helps local economies grow by “providing women entrepreneurs around the world with business management education, mentoring and networking, and access to capital.” The program was launched in response to research conducted by the Goldman Sachs institute, which found that increasing the number of women in the workforce could increase global income per capita as much as 20% by 2030. Not only does it help the revenue growth and job creation, but empowering women can create a multiplier effect that positively affects the welfare of future generations. Powell cites that 90 percent of the women in this program are mentoring at least one other woman, or finding ways to provide education or health care in their local communities.

Many have commended Powell’s ability to not only come up with ideas but also her ability to execute them without fail. Her colleagues also unanimously agree that she has an uncanny ability to foster partnerships. For example, while she worked under the Bush administration, she connected business leaders with the government to provide disaster relief. In an incidental meeting with Pattie Sellers, the executive director of the Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, Powell decided to start a mentoring program called the Fortune/US State Department Global Women’s Mentoring Partnership.

Powell is currently back in the White House working under the Trump administration as his economic assistant and senior counselor for economic initiatives. Just recently she was promoted to Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy. Though she is dubbed as “Ivanka Trump’s right-hand woman,” Powell is one of the few people in the new administration that both parties agree will be an effective leader that will work toward advancing the societal and economic standing of the country.

Powell is an outstanding example of what it means to use power for good. She has not only managed to lead initiatives like 10,000 Women and 10,000 Small Businesses, but her philanthropic and policy-making efforts have created a platform for the empowerment of women and minorities worldwide. Her ability to establish partnerships and turn ideas into tangible results have made her successful in her career; however, it’s her passion, drive, and desire to give other people what she has, that have made her someone all young women should look to as a role model.

The original story was published on The WIB Wire on March 12, 2017. Find it here.