On March 6 over 300 people filled the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History for the third annual HERstory event, celebrating changemaker women of Santa Cruz County. This event, hosted by the MAH, the Santa Cruz County Office of Education and Lookout Santa Cruz, honored 10 women in three different categories – Legacy, Impact and Rising – representing the past, present and future leadership of the county. Check out our photo album from the event here.
The Women’s History Month event included tabling from local organizations supporting women of the county, a photo booth, museum exhibits including the HERstory exhibit permanently featured in the history gallery, an art activity and a program. Attendees engaged in a scavenger hunt to navigate the tabling organizations, reading about the nominees and enjoying the galleries of the museum before Assemblymember Gail Pellerin took the stage and kicked off the night by announcing a performance by the Harbor High School dance team. Following the dance, Pellerin announced the first speaker of the night, Gail Michaelis-Ow.
Michaelis-Ow is a nurse practitioner who helped to open a Planned Parenthood clinic in the county in 1976. She has helped to serve patients of Santa Cruz and fought to expand health care across the area. Her powerful speech highlighted her work and the importance of reproductive health and rights; she spoke of last year’s shutdown of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Santa Cruz and her continued fight to protect women and their rights through health care.
The next speaker was Yadira Flores Martinez, a community organizer and equity leader, centering her work on racial justice, youth leadership and cultural healing. That work focuses on connecting youth with nature and career pathways, through which she has helped advance inclusion and community resilience. In her emotional speech, she talked of her own experiences with nature and how it led her to the work she does now, helping Latino youth advance their careers and get involved in the nature around them.
The final speakers of the night were Ivory Woodson and Amara Anderson, both high school seniors and awardees in the Rising category. Anderson, the president of the Black Student Union at Santa Cruz High School and the countywide Black Student Union, partners with different organizations across the county and has helped to create a stronger support system for Black youth in Santa Cruz. Woodson founded the BSU at Soquel High School and has helped both her school and others across the county grow their BSUs in connection with different students and community organizations. Anderson and Woodson closed out the night speaking of overcoming imposter syndrome and about how women deserve to hold positions of leadership.
The event highlighted the importance of intergenerational connection and the enduring strength, legacy and future of female changemakers in our community. The energy inside the MAH was full of hope, pride and joy. HERstory was a special night where the past was honored, the present energized and the future was shown to be clearly in good hands.
Galicia Stack Lozano is a student at UC Santa Cruz and an intern at Lookout Santa Cruz through the Humanities EXCEL program led by the UC Santa Cruz Humanities Division with strategic support from The Humanities Institute