The Women of Color in Leadership Forum at St. John’s School

Recently, St. John’s School welcomed eight successful women of color for the Women Helping Empower Each Other (WHEE) and Unity Council forum on Women of Color in Leadership. I sat down with Mackenzie Rice, a junior at St. John’s, a WHEE Board Member, and the Unity Council Lower School Coordinator, who helped organize the event. Mackenzie spoke of the importance of organizations such as WHEE, whose mission is to “serve as a cohesive group of female-identifying St. John’s students and faculty that nurtures lasting and empowering relationships with one another” and Unity Council, whose goal is “to promote an environment of acceptance, equality, and progress within the St. John’s community, to discuss and address any issues that may make a student feel unwelcome in respect to diversity, to provide a safe haven for the diverse community at St. John’s, and to make diversity of all sorts a well-known and well-understood presence in the St. John’s community.”

The junior class leadership of the Unity Council created the idea of the Women of Color in Leadership forum. The junior Unity Council board members, Aashna Poduval, Benjamin Lu, Mackenzie Rice, Nadiya Naehr, and Shreyes Balachandran, wanted to have a panel-style forum where everyone could hear the speakers share their stories. The eight women invited to speak were Dr. Carla Davis, Chief of Allergy and Immunology at Texas Children’s, Dr. Brenda Rangel, Assistant Dean of Rice Center for Education, Elizabeth Trujillo, UH Law Professor and Founder of Initiative on Global Law and Policy for America’s, Hélade Scutti-Santos, Director of Language Instruction at Rice, Sehba Ali, Chief Executive Officer of KIPP Texas, Meera Naehr, Chief Financial Officer at Fractal Polymers, Obi Solaja, Operations Lead for DOW Chemicals, and Kiran Verma, Founder and Executive Chef of Kiran’s, an upscale Indian fusion restaurant.

Rice spoke on the importance of having a first-hand account of what it is like to be a woman of color in a leadership position because, as she said, “Reaching that place in their careers is remarkable with their identities. Being a woman is hard, being a person of color is hard, and these women are both. They could truly impact our audience by just being them and speaking.” Rice hopes the speakers reached the hearts and minds of their listeners and that the speakers will come back again to share more. “Listening to their stories made me feel like there was nothing that I couldn’t do and it showed me that there are these trailblazers who are making the path for us as the younger generation. It shows that we can look up to women as role models.” 

While the event was a great success, it did require serious planning and work. Rice wanted to invite people who would “understand the importance of speaking to students.” When she first reached out to gauge interest in participating in the forum, she didn’t expect the response she received. “When I reached out to these women, I thought that I would get a lot of ‘No’s’ or ‘I’m busy’s’ or ‘This sounds great, but I’m volunteering to come to speak to a bunch of high schoolers?’ I didn’t think that people would want to do that. But every single person I reached out to was willing, excited, and just honored to be asked, which was so beautiful to see.”

The forum was separated into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and Humanities so that students could listen to what they most wanted to hear about. The speakers were able to share their backstories, their experiences as women of color in their fields, their plans for the future, and anything else they wanted to share with the St. John’s student body. There was also a chance for the audience to ask the speakers questions. 

The forum was quite an achievement but wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the efforts of several staff members, students, and student-led organizations, playing large and small roles behind the scenes to contribute to the forum. While the forum was primarily led by Unity Council, the junior leadership of WHEE, Mackenzie Rice, Naina Pai, Mary Ho, and Penelope Macpherson, and the Unity Council Sponsors, Mr. James King, Dr. Sarwat Jafry, and Ms. D’Hania Hunt were also helpful in the production of the Women of Color in Leadership Forum. Rice gave a special shout-out to Mr. King, saying, “He was fabulous; he invited his classes, reserved the rooms for the speakers, and ordered pizza.” 

When asked about why a presentation about Women of Color in Leadership is important, Rice, who is Filipina and white, said, “Personally, I’ve grown up with a mom [Tabitha Rice, Executive Vice President at Texas Children’s for almost 25 years] who is incredible and such a girl boss that has always inspired me. She is a woman in a historically male-dominated field and for many years has strongly advocated for women leaders to find their voice and for the workplace to be more diverse and inclusive. As I’ve gotten older, I have realized that this is not the case for a lot of girls. They don’t have strong female role models in their lives, and it is so important to empower those voices.”

Rice hopes that the forum has encouraged female students at St. John’s to follow their dreams and fight for their spots in jobs that are traditionally male-dominated, regardless of their gender, skin color, or ethnicity. With her final words of encouragement, Rice said, “Support women, choose to love. People have really cool things to say when given the opportunity to say them. Listen more. You can accomplish whatever you set your mind to, no matter who you are or what you look like. We cannot be held back or confined anymore. The glass ceiling is being shattered.”