Nashville's Beacon of Light
ATHENA is exceedingly fortunate to have a dynamic, inspiring team of engaged leaders in Nashville who honor ATHENA’s eight principles of women’s leadership every day. Nashville has a long illustrious history with ATHENA, hosting two annual conferences, contributing two ATHENA international presidents, plus board and advisory group members. This committed group of volunteers, mentors and creators is not content with past successes. They strive every day to further women’s leadership, to increase and expand their outreach, and to celebrate diverse women leaders in their community.
I had the opportunity to meet with three Nashville ATHENA award recipients last month, Dr. Katherine Y. Brown (2021), Linda Peek Schacht (2014) and Patricia Pierce (2003), to talk about Nashville’s unique awards ceremonies, scholarship programs and leadership development initiatives. Their incredible energy and commitment to women’s leadership represents a multi-generational approach to mentoring and developing women and girls as leaders. Patricia and Linda have been mentors, leaders, and ATHENA International board members spanning two decades. Katherine is a shining example of an ATHENA leader and double award recipient who had the passion and commitment to create three organizations (nonprofits and LLC) to serve her community. She exemplifies ATHENA’s principles of giving back and living authentically.
According to Pat, Nashville’s ATHENA historian, the first Nashville ATHENA awards program was held in 1991. In June 2021 the 30th ATHENA leadership award was presented--a track record that sets the bar very high! In 1990 the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) convened 20 Nashville area women’s groups to plan the first award. Cable, the oldest women’s advancement organization in Nashville, became the presenting organization a few years later. Fast forward to this year when over 100 amazing nominees from 52 organizations representing the diversity of Nashville gathered in an elegant in- person and virtual event. “Electric” describes the energy in the room that night, says Katherine, who is the first in Nashville to receive both the ATHENA Young Professional Award and the traditional ATHENA award. She emphasizes that the program is a wonderful “celebration of the accomplishments of what women can do”, echoing Pat who notes that each woman who is nominated “exemplifies leadership, superior performance, commitment to community and unselfish assistance to women and women’s issues.” Pat is proud that the awards “have a great impact on the larger community and bring great awareness to women’s leadership.” This year also included a special “Pioneer Award” to leaders in racial justice and public health, recognizing the challenges of 2020. Nashville knows how to honor those who serve.
Many of Nashville’s innovations in the ATHENA awards can be adopted by other presenting organizations, but one unique feature cannot. The Nashville Parthenon, originally built for Tennessee’s 1897 Centennial Exposition, is a replica of the historic Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Inside is a forty-two-foot statue of ATHENA. Nashville nominees have gathered at Athena’s feet for decades for the annual event or reception.
Dr. Katherine Y. Brown, this year’s recipient, exemplifies that wisdom and service.
Each year, the women nominated must answer a question posed by the Awards committee. In 2021 that was: What life experiences have prepared you for a time such as this? How will you play a role in helping our community overcome adversity and create a better Nashville? Katherine focused on what she had done during the pandemic, which included a whopping 9000 hours of community service. Her answer was a challenge. “The question can no longer be what can we do, it's what we ARE doing. I’ve trained over 300,000 for free in CPR because I understand that at the root of social justice is access and fairness. People need tools to reach equity. It’s not just COVID19 but all the issues that escalated as a result of inequality.” Katherine’s remarkable achievements include founding The Dr. Katherine Y. Brown (KYB) Leadership Academy where she mentors female leaders on strategies to build the capacity for global leadership while also increasing awareness of pulmonary hypertension. KYB Leadership Academy Conferences in Dubai, UAE, Costa Rica, Johannesburg, South Africa, and Medellin Colombia, South America show her global reach. During the first year of the pandemic she organized twenty projects, launched a KYB Leadership Academy cohort in Nigeria and at two colleges as well as high schools. She was always drawn to grassroots work and found her passion in teaching CPR to everyone, finding new opportunities in locations throughout the community, from shelters to underserved urban neighborhoods, training individuals and groups, corporations, national civic organizations, and saving lives one teaching moment at a time. Through her Learn CPR America, she travels nationally and internationally teaching CPR. Dr. Brown also founded the Roberta Baines-Wheeler (RBW) Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) Awareness Group, a nonprofit, to honor her mother.(kybleadership.com)
During the pandemic, Katherine hosted mental health education programs, trained over 5000 people on Pulmonary Hypertension, donated to food pantries, provided disaster relief supplies to vulnerable populations, and led a free virtual conference for 550 people on sexual assault, dating violence and sex trafficking. She did this work as an unpaid volunteer while being a wife, mother of 4 children, caring for 2 dogs and working full time! She also became an TEDx speaker, authored six publications, released three books, appeared in Forbes.com, and continued to inspire as a speaker & consultant.
Perhaps we can all ask ourselves not only what we will do in the year ahead but consider our accomplishments and acknowledge how challenging it was for us all. Katherine passionately shares that she has always been inspired by the ATHENA principle of “living authentically”, while holding up Martha Mertz’s Becoming ATHENA book on our zoom call.
Katherine credits Linda Peek Schacht, her mentor, with helping her to be succeed by challenging her in a “gentle way, and “loving me for my true authentic self.” She thanked her in her ATHENA acceptance speech, and is proud to share that Linda is now mentoring her only daughter, Sydney Y.K. Brown, who is already an accomplished young woman making her own impact in the world. “The ATHENA Awards Program is about being a beacon of light and hope for the next woman” Katherine explained.
Sydney is an aspiring physician researcher, graduated one year early from college (magna cum laude) and is now completing her master’s degree (at a graduate program started by Linda) during her gap year prior to medical school. As I hear this story of multigenerational engagement and achievement with ATHENA, I’m touched by how much all of the women I spoke to care deeply about each other and their success as well as inspiring the next generation. When asked what this involvement has given to her, Linda states simply, while smiling broadly, “fulfillment.”
Not surprisingly, an ATHENA connection is the secret sauce behind the impact of Nashville’s leadership development programs for women and girls. Cable added scholarships for high school seniors and nontraditional college students through its ATHENA scholarship program, supported in part by an ATHENA Patrons Society and through Dell, which supplies a computer to each of the scholarship awardees. ATHENA nominees and recipients are the driving force for the new Votes for Women Room at the Nashville Public Library which celebrates the 19th Amendment and challenges a new generation to leadership and Pat and Yvonne Wood, a recipient and past president of ATHENA International were instrumental in building the statue of leaders of Tennessee’s suffrage movement near the Parthenon. ATHENA women play a key role in Cable’s women's leadership initiative including a year-long mentoring program for young professionals and a certificate based executive leadership academy. These same ATHENA women, led by Pat, Linda and ATHENA recipient Margaret Behm, created the award-winning Music City Girls Lead! high school academy for girls for Nashville’s NCAA Women's Final Four organizing committee and attracted $100,000 in funding. Katherine, a graduate of ELA and MCGL! mentor, and her daughter Sydney, a graduate of MCGL!, have together keynoted these programs. You can see them at https://www.musiccitygirlslead.com/. Over the last decade several hundred women and girls benefitted from the mentoring program, executive leadership academy, and Music City Girls Lead! academy. Linda cites “the impact of these programs and the lives they have changed” as inspiration to do more.
It’s with deep gratitude and more than a little awe that we thank Nashville for the inspiring work that they have done for the last 30 years and continue to do to further the ATHENA principles, and to support and celebrate past, present and future women leaders. We love your energy, your graciousness and your unyielding commitment.