Work

“Work” is a value-laden term that has changed drastically over time, particularly in relation to women’s daily lives. Despite a legacy of opinions to the contrary, WWHP views women’s work as inherently valuable, whether taking place in the formal structure of paid employment or the private realm of home and family. We seek to understand each woman’s work on her own terms in her own words.

Stacey Luster

General Counsel, Worcester State University

What I think we have to work on more as women is lifting each other up…make each other highlight each other’s accomplishments and treat each other as our potential, not our shortcomings, to really build each other up.

Stacey Luster is a third generation Worcesterite. During her formative years she lived in Great Brook Valley, Plumley Village, and Washington Heights. She graduated from South High School at the age of 16. She attended St. John’s University in New York and completed her degree in Government and Administration. In addition, she graduated from Boston University School of Law. In 1991 she was elected to the Worcester City Council, the first elected black woman to serve in that capacity.

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Thu, 03/09/2023
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Ashley Carter

Farmers' Market program Coordinator, Regional Environmental Council

From a very young age, I had connections to outdoors and to growing plants and animals… I loved those things…That love for nature and farms, that started at a very early age. I had my first garden when I was really little. [My advice] is make your own space, be free to be a woman. Make sure to have fun and find love and enjoy your life…Be willing to ask for help, too…We should be helping one another, it’s not a sign of weakness.

Ashley Carter was born in March, 1984. She lives with her two daughters and husband, Royland, who she met while abroad in Nicaragua. Ashley works for the REC [ Regional Environmental Council] as the Farmers’ Market Program Coordinator. She grew up in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, with her parents and siblings. From a very young age, she had a love for plants, animals, and nature itself. Her life experiences, including being a mother, struggling with mental health issues, and being involved in the community have shaped her into the person she is today.

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Tue, 02/21/2023
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Leigh Anne Bianchi

Owner, The Good Citizen Project and Chris's Collections

So that was the basis for The Good Citizenship Project, which is now morphed into something entirely different, except for that it's based on the idea that, everybody, everybody, doesn't matter who you are, what your diagnosis is, what culture, ethnicity, anything, we all need meaning and purpose. Every single one of us needs a reason to get up in the morning, and for The Good Citizenship that means going and helping other people by helping out in farms and barns. So, parents with people that have autism will contact me. I will go pick them up at their house and we'll bring them to local farms and barns, and I teach them how to do all the chores. Through that, they get to interact with all the animals that are there. Sometimes it’s horses, sometimes it's llamas and peacocks, sometimes it's cows and we do all the chores and I mean all the chores, cleaning up the manure, moving the hay, fixing fences, learning how to trim the goats' hooves. And everything that goes in between that. So, they get these marketable skills that they need to be able to go out into the world and be positive contributing members of the community. And the barn owners get much needed help...So, everybody wins and I am there to make sure that if there's someone confused, they don't know what to do or maybe there's a better way to do that chore, I teach them. I teach them how to do it and I base that on my own autism and obvious signs of autism throughout the family and all the years working in the field.....I'll never be rich doing this financially, but I will always be rich in spirit. Always. Because I know that what I'm doing helps other people and I'm teaching others to be helpful and kind and involved in community. At the very basis of it just giving back and doing good where you can, and that's enough for me.

Leigh Anne Bianchi was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1974. She spent the first 11 years of her life there. She and her family then moved to Kentucky, Ohio, and finally Holden, Massachusetts.  She arrived in the Wachusett area at the age of 14. She currently resides in Paxton. She has worked as a nanny and babysitter as well as in preschools, daycares, farms, and the food service industry. As the founder and sole worker of The Good Citizenship Project and Chris’s Collections, she touches upon how she came to develop these organizations and what their core values are.

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Wed, 03/08/2023
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Elizabeth Watts Pope

Curator of Books & Digitized Collections, American Antiquarian Society

I wanted to go for a PhD in history, but I finished the master's and thought maybe I'd work for a while.  And so I looked around and the one place I really wanted to work in Worcester was the American Antiquarian Society because it focuses on the history of books, so that kind of history of writing, publishing these books--how do we know history and so much of what we know is from written words and so often these words come through books.  I became really interested in the history of the book which I first learned about at grad school at UConn and then when I realized there's a place that's like a center for this that's going to be in the place where my husband is working, you know, it was perfect.

Elizabeth Watts Pope was born in Manchester, Connecticut. She met her future husband in third grade and they married in 2003.  They moved to Quinsigamond Village in Worcester, Massachusetts when her husband became a pastor there. Elizabeth studied at Gordon College and the University of Connecticut and found her dream job as curator at the American Antiquarian Society. In this interview she describes growing up with her family and her love of history, books, and the written word.

Interview Date: 
Thu, 03/30/2023
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Kellie Hamilton

RN; Holistic Nutrition Coach, A Better Path to Wellness

Kellie Hamilton is a Worcester, Massachusetts resident who was born in 1991. She is originally from East Brookfield, Massachusetts. She attended David Prouty High School in Spencer, Massachusetts. She grew up with her younger sister, mother, and father. After graduating from high school in 2010, she attended Worcester State University where she earned a degree in nursing. She is currently working as a registered nurse at UMASS [University of Massachusetts] Memorial Medical Center, a hospital where her mother and father previously worked. After reading a book on holistic nutrition, she became fascinated by the subject. As time passed, individuals started coming to her for advice about holistic nutrition, and she started a Facebook page, A Better Path to Wellness. In the early months of 2021 Kellie decided it was time to grow her passion and make it a business. Hard work and dedication fueled her efforts to become an entrepreneur. Kellie is an extremely passionate individual. She is an inspiration to many women around the country and continues to work toward leaving her own legacy.

You always have options and that was a thing that my parents really tried to drive home for me, is that just because there is a roadblock there’s a way around it, that you always have options, you just have to search for them, and that’s what I did.....I want to say it to a lot of the younger women that I hope listen to this someday, I want you to be inspired, and educated, and motivated to do the ideas in your head that you think will make a difference....If everybody inspired somebody to do one thing that they were passionate about, think of how much better the world would be.

Interview Date: 
Fri, 02/17/2023
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Sanam Zaer

School Administrator; Administrator of "A Better Shrewsbury" online forum

I ran for school committee, but I didn't get on it. I ran for two years in a row. And my main motivation there was just to kind of change the conversation here in Shrewsbury. You had asked some of the challenges in Shrewsbury. One is that we have 100% white school administration, school committee leadership, in a district that's 51% non-white, which is, I mean that's a huge disparity. So, when I ran—and I think towns in general have a habit of not speaking directly about certain issues, because they want to uphold the appearance that everything is okay, everything is fine, we're an awesome school, that kind of stuff. But I think you know you can be an awesome school and also acknowledge, these are areas we need to work on and really tackle those. So, me running was just an effort to kind of encourage new people to run and push some of these different topics to the forefront of conversation.

Sanam Zaer was born in 1983 and is a mother to 2 biological children and several foster children and who lives in Shrewsbury Massachusetts. Sanam grew up in Grafton and has lived all over, spending most of her time in Central Massachusetts and California. Sanam attended University of Massachusetts Amherst where she earned her bachelor’s in journalism and English and a master’s degree in education. Her early love for spending time with children helped her to her current profession as an elementary school tutor and a school administrator.

Interview Date: 
Wed, 03/15/2023
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AiVi Nguyen

Attorney, Bowditch & Dewey

I work at Bowditch and Dewey, which is a 120-year-old law firm, and one of my partners, he is like one of the greatest litigators of all time. He just took me under his wing, he takes all of us under his wing. So just having the ability to have access to one of the most well-respected lawyers in the city really helps you to gain invitations to rooms you wouldn't necessarily be invited in. And then once you get there, you prove yourself, and suddenly you're invited to do lots of things. You know? So I think mentorship from the legal community in terms of Bowditch and Dewey. But then there are women who run other companies that I just sort of met along the way who helped me get into other rooms that Mike Angelini is not going to get into, certain rooms like Linda Cavaioli from the YWCA used to. It's like the mentors have been people who were, I think, excited to see a Worcester kid grow up and stay in Worcester and succeed. I've been lucky in that way, too, where people just offered help, and I quickly knew it was okay to ask for help or to reach out to people and make connections. But it's been in the professional world, definitely, that I've gotten my most mentorship and my best friendships are other women who don't necessarily work at the same firm as me or are even lawyers, but they're in positions of—I don't want to say power—they're in high level positions, and they struggle with sort of the same things I do, where it's tiring to be the only chick in the room and kind of young still. It used to be really hard for me. I'd be 32 years old, looking around, there’s nobody under the age of 60, all white dudes. And it's nice to have people who've already done it, or people who are doing it in other spaces to just talk to throughout the time. I don't know. I think I would have gone crazy by now, 14 years later, because there's not that many women. All of my lawsuits, it's very few that I have women as opposing counsel. So, it's nice to have women outside of my every—like in my real interactions. I'd argue that I'm one of the few women litigators, business litigators, at the whole firm. Everybody has their niches, but I'm like the traditional—when you picture what I do, you picture a 50-year-old white man. So, it's nice to have women who, whether they sit in healthcare or in nonprofits, are the equivalent.  They expect me to be a 50-year-old white guy, and here I am.

AiVi Nguyen was born in Worcester, Great Brook Valley in 1984. She went to Holy Name High School and received her higher education at the University of Pennsylvania where she received her undergraduate degree and Boston College where she went to law school and graduated in 2009. She is Vietnamese American, born to Vietnamese immigrant parents. She's lived in Worcester most of her life, and works as a lawyer at Bowditch and Dewey.

Interview Date: 
Wed, 03/15/2023
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Valerie Zolezzi-Wyndham

Founder and CEO, Promoting Good

I was a civil rights lawyer for a really long time and our client communities were you know, majority of the global majority, right? And, and yet our staff was not representative of the communities that we served. And I do a lot of work in my organization to help management and the attorneys think about how to build better relationships with the clients that we served and did work to try to have the staff better reflect the communities that we were working with. So, I did that work informally for a long time. And then five years ago, I decided that’s what I should actually be doing. And so, I started Promoting Good on a leap of faith [laughs] thinking there was a need for organizations that want to be inclusive…or maybe don’t always want to do it. A bit of both. And so, I started a company that just does that. So, it started out with just me, and now there’s five of us. All women of color, and we are trying to help organizations do their work differently.

Valerie Zolezzi-Wyndham was born in 1983 in Mexico and came to Worcester, Massachusetts in 2002. She has always worked in Worcester County, and she currently lives in Upton, Massachusetts. After graduating from law school, Valerie was employed as a managing attorney at Community Legal Aid. She is the founder and CEO of Promoting Good, LLC, which is a consulting firm that leads transformational change processes based on diversity and equity. She has expertise in health equity and social determinants of health-focused strategies.

Interview Date: 
Thu, 03/09/2023
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Clare Hendra

Industrial Engineer

What I had to do was face down the union and get them (the workers) working to the clock, not to the rate, and that was bad.  It was really bad.  First of all, they didn’t want a woman in a man’s job.  Reason:  You find out how much more they’re making than you.  I made less than the men on the floor.  I was the Head Foreman which meant the men on the floor reported to a supervisor or leader who reported to a foreman, and the foremen worked for me.  And I got less than the guys on the floor......I knew that we were paving the way.  And I remember one time at Strathmore Paper, one of the people in personnel was a woman.  She said to me, you know, when I was feeling particularly bad, she said, “Remember we are not doing this for us.  We’re doing it for our daughters.  So that when they encounter work, it’ll be better for them.  Remember that.” And you know that was my goal.  If I can’t have it, you know, at that point I didn’t know if I’d have a daughter or not, but I have a niece and I have a grandniece and I can make it better for them.  Because, we (women) deserve it.  We have a lot to offer.  We are not second-class citizens.  There are so many very bright women. 

This interview is about the life of Clare Louise Hendra who was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and later moved to Worcester, MA.  In this interview, we explore Clare’s early life leading up to her college years and discover how she ended up in Worcester, Massachusetts and paved the way for local women’s rights in the workplace through her career.  As a grandchild of Slovak immigrants, we touch upon Clare’s reconnection to her family members in Zemplinska Teplica.  As the interview continues, we examine Clare’s success in education from a young age as well as the start of he

Interview Date: 
Sun, 03/19/2023
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Hendra

Jennifer Freed

Writer, Writing and ESL Teacher

I think I ended up writing about that because it was a way to help me - it was like my therapy and then taking what would be possibly a messy journal entry and taming it and shaping it into a poem that would have some meaning to someone else. It's like when you're really focused on some task, then all this swirl of anxiety all around you kind of goes away because you're just focused on this one thing and then with poetry you get a poem out of it in the end. So, when I had enough of those, I realized oh I have enough for a book, and I made my first collection.

Jennifer Freed grew up in Stow, Massachusetts and received a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Yale University. After college, Jennifer taught English learning skills in the People’s Republic of China. It was there where she discovered her love of teaching which led to her teaching English as a Second Language in the United States. She is married and worked as a teacher in Boston until the oldest of her two daughters was born. Jennifer and her family moved to the Worcester area, residing in Holden, MA, when her husband got a job working at UMass Medical.

Interview Date: 
Thu, 03/09/2023
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