Women have always been the glue that has held our society together.

Yet their contributions, by and large, have been uncelebrated and unrecognized.

This program is an opportunity to make sure that women are included in the history of this region.

By giving them a chance to tell their stories in their own words.

We want to recognize and honor the contributions of women throughout our region, including these remarkable women.

Our first profile is of Teresa Miller, a lifelong resident of the Tri State, accomplished businesswoman and chronic disease survivor.

Here is her story.

I had an idyllic childhood.

I had the greatest mama in the world.

I knew everybody in my neighborhood.

I went to the same grade school my whole life and in the same high school.

I was blessed that I had tons of friends.

And, you know, we were safe and we were happy.

And it was fun and it was perfect.

I met Teresa.

We were both in our very early 20s, barely 20, and we were both working at a second job as waitresses after our full time job during the day.

She had this great spirit about her and she was to someone I just had to know.

I started out as a server at a popular restaurant in Evansville, and I did that for about five years through college.

I worked, 16 years in the trucking industry as a salesperson.

Then I went to work, for a fortune 100 financial company.

I was a financial advisor for 11 years with them.

And then I left that financial advisor position to open Grateful Threads.

It kind of happened in a funny way.

My husband and I love old houses, historic homes, and we're in our third one now that we've redone.

I was buying fabric from a little shop in Evansville, and the lady approached me one day and said, I want to sell you my company.

I think you'd really be good at this.

And I got to the car, I thought, gee,I just wanted a yard of fabric.

Very shortly thereafter, my banker called me and said, well, how are you coming on your fabric store?

I said, well, you said no.

And she said, well, here's what we know.

All the other fabric stores in Evansville have closed, and we need a professional home decor, open to the public, fabric shop.

And so we think you'd be great at doing it.

And so six months later, I bought this building with my husband and we started renovating it.

And we've been here for 17.5 years.

We ran towards downtown when everybody else was running away.

You know, we're we're proud to say we're the second oldest retail in downtown Evansville.

I love to work and I love to travel.

And, my husband and I, we do a lot of we do a lot of traveling, but this little company's made it possible for me to do to have that kind of leisure life.

Two of the jobs that I've had were totally male dominated.

I think a lot of times they didn't want me there.

When I was in the traffic, business, I was one of only two female traffic reps with all the different trucking companies in the whole area.

So it was it was kind of a new deal that women were in that industry, out in sales.

That, industry was very receptive, to a new face.

When I went into the financial services industry, I was the only female in a 50 male office.

And so I was just determined that I was going to play with the boys.

And so, that was a more of an uphill climb.

I worked like a mad woman.

And thankfully, I married to my very best friend, and he was so supportive of it.

There was a lot of stress related, that job that was self-imposed because I just wanted to do very, very well.

And, in that time frame, multiple sclerosis came to visit me and, and one day I went blind and was paralyzed on the right side of my body for six weeks.

And so that was a very, very scary time because I was self-employed and didn't know if I was ever going to go into remission.

If I was, this was going to be my reality for the rest of my life.

And so, I had a fantastic neurologist who got me on the right medication at the exact right time.

And, for 22 years, I gave myself a shot every day.

And, about two months after I initially got sick, I went into full blown remission and then in remission.

Ever since, it never occupied her mind fully.

She was always thinking about other things.

Never mentioned it.

Really?

No, she never talked about it.

Never felt sorry for herself?

No.

She didn't.

I mean, for seven years, I was a, patient advocate for a pharmaceutical company.

I would call patients, and then I would.

I that segued into me being their national spokesperson.

And so I traveled all over the country speaking to physicians or patients or clinical nurses.

And then in between, I would talk to patients on the phone that they would send to me and encourage them in their journey.

And that was probably some most fulfilling work I ever did.

She has the most incredible gift to lift other people up.

And I've used every layer of every job to land where I am today.

I'm very proud of this company Grateful Threads.

We started from nothing, knowing nothing about the industry.

I had a wonderful group of women that came to work with me and taught me and were patient with me.

My husband, the whole step of the way was saying, you can do this.

You can do anything you set your mind to.

If she's looking for an answer, she's going to find the answer.

Well, I don't intend to ever retire.

People ask me all the time, are you going to retire when you're going to retire?

If I do, I'll be forced into retirement because we're losing all of our crafts people.

When we opened the shop 17 years ago, we had 18 Upholsterers in Evansville.

Now we have three.

And so that's sad, because it's a really a dying art.

If you don't have enough faith in yourself to go for what you want, find somebody else that does.

If you believe it, you can do it.

Like my mom said, if you work hard enough, you can have it.

Our next profile is of Kim Wren.

While she has only been in our area for less than a decade.

Kim has already had a huge impact.

I am the child of two military parents.

My dad was in the army and my mom was in the Navy.

I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, so a few months after that, I'm still a little bit bitter about it.

We got relocated to Chesapeake, Virginia, so grew up for the most part in Chesapeake, Virginia, a big military town.

And that's where both of my parents retired from service, and that's where my brother and I grew up.

I grew up a musician, only musician in my family.

I started playing in my school orchestra program in sixth grade.

I'm a bass player, and that was like, my thing.

I wasn't into sports.

I wasn't into kind of anything else.

I was 100% a music kid.

I was often one of the only girls, and pretty much the only person of color that could be found in the whole orchestra, which, you know, presented its own set of challenges of.

I never saw anybody like me who was doing the thing that I wanted to do.

My sophomore year of high school, we moved down to Atlanta, Georgia, to be closer to both my parents families.

The most significant and the most tragic, transition I've gone through is losing my mom.

We unfortunately lost her back in, 2009, just after I graduated from high school.

We lost her to breast cancer.

It's never the right time to lose a parent.

No matter the nature of your relationship with them.

And I had a really good relationship with my mom.

She was the type of person who was not afraid to tackle new stuff, which is maybe where I get it from.

And it's part of my identity now.

I'm.

I'm a woman who's lost her mom to cancer and lost her at 17 years old.

And so figuring out, like and and re figuring out over and over again how the world works without her here is huge.

It's really inspiring to see how far she's come.

Just from what I know about her, from our childhood, everything she shared with me.

And yet she's persevered through some of that and just made her way in this world professionally and personally.

I moved 13 hours away from home overnight to go to Michigan State University to study music education, because I wanted to be a music teacher.

And so I moved to Michigan State, studied there, was there for five years, loved my college experience.

After that, it was time to go into the professional world and find a job and relocate.

And, I ended up, just kind of, by happenstance, ended up in Evansville, Indiana, knowing nobody and having never been here before, I accepted a job.

I rented an apartment over the phone.

I moved all of my stuff here in one car trip and started teaching a few weeks later.

In a city like Evansville.

Things like family name are very important.

So you hear certain names in Evansville and you know the people associated with that name, but what happens when you kind of drop in and nobody knows you?

You have no history.

You have no family name, to back you up.

So I found it very important to find spaces where people like that gather.

We were a part of a community that was not maybe so encouraging of just being a single woman in this world.

They were very much, encouraging of of getting married and having kids.

And, you know, just Kim I think, had to push through some of that during that time.

I'm thankful for the support system that I built here.

One of the hardest things to do is to build a new friend group and a new professional network in a place you've never lived before where nobody knows you.

But it's also refreshing because you get to rewrite your story kind of from the ground up.

So I taught at Thompkins Middle School for five years.

So also a former jet, wonderful school to teach that wonderful industry to be in.

So EVSC puts on a summer musical each summer, and for about four summers, I got the opportunity to direct the orchestra for that, show.

So I got to, you know, conduct The Little Mermaid, the early modern Millie, hello, Dolly!

And Les Mis, which are very, very cool experiences.

But I also, at the end of year five, kind of went through an early career crisis where I kind of had a moment where I was like, is this what I want to do?

For I love it, but this is what I'm going to do for the next 30 years.

And so I kind of took some time to reevaluate kind of what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be, what I grew up in, in my early 20s and, personal finance just I don't know exactly why, but it just kept emerging as an interest to me.

And so I started off just doing some self-study, on personal finance and investing and how all of that worked.

She made tons of impact on people around Evansville in such a short time that she's lived here a few months after going into practice, we had this whole global pandemic thing kind of happened.

So that threw me for a loop.

And, also in that time, I changed firms, joined a team, which I'm thrilled to be a part of.

To this day, I find myself one of very few women who are in finance, although a lot has improved in that front here in Evansville, we still got a long way to go.

I'm still very much on on the climb.

You know, I don't have the the accolades that I, you know, that that people who I look up to have have accomplished, which is I think I'm in an appropriate place, but still very early on in this career.

But I think just having the the courage to pivot and having the courage to tear my career apart and put it back together and not, staying stuck where I was just because that's what I was doing at the time, was a scary thing, but also something I'm, I'm proud of myself for doing.

Let's learn more about Ashley Bartholomew and her personal struggles and triumphs.

I feel like my story is not super compelling because, like, I don't have, like, this tragic backstory.

I don't have this, like, these obstacles that I had to overcome.

You know, I just was uncomfortablewas restless, irritable and discontent, on the inside.

And I just kept seeking things outside myself to, try and fill that void.

Everything on the outside was always, like, so good.

And that made it even harder for me to understand that, like, I can still be having a problem on the inside.

I got a full ride scholarship to Western Kentucky.

I did so well all through undergraduate that my professors asked me to stay and complete, my graduate.

So I got a I have a master's degree in experimental psychology for absolutely no reason.

That period in my life was when things really started to spiral.

I'm being introduced to all kinds of, new things.

Having gotten away from my hometown, gotten away from my mom, gotten away from my family.

And so, I moved back here.

I continued, doing what I was doing just with a new set of people.

I was very deep in active addiction.

I found out that I was pregnant, and I couldn't stop using.

I used all through my pregnancy.

I didn't tell anyone.

I was too scared.

And my son was born, addicted to opiates, and he had to be, dosed down in the NICU.

And, that was a really, really, really dark period of my life.

Going to the NICU for his feedings and, like, passing all of these families that had these babies in the little incubators and, like, one of those children did everything that they could to have healthy kids.

And then, you know, this is just how life happened to them.

And I just was so selfish that I had put my son into this position.

I still don't know that there is a different way.

I don't know that I have a disease like that a lot of other people have.

I'm sitting in this place of I am this horrible human being.

Like all of the things that I felt my whole life that had kept me running from myself.

And now you add this to it, that I had done the most horrible thing th On top of all of it, I got myself into some serious trouble.

Some some big girl trouble.

And I did my first serious, time in jail.

It was 92 days, but, just so happened to include, Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day and my birthday.

And, I mean, it felt like two years easy.

And when I got out of jail, I had lost my home.

I lost my son.

He was with my mom.

I'm always, always so grateful for my family he didn't have to go into foster care or anything, but I had nowhere to go.

I had no resources left.

My family was staying away from me.

But the Y let me come to let me come here.

Ashley came in as a referral and, of course, at that time, everyone thinks that they can do it on their own.

When Ashley got here, Ashley was what we call tired of being tired.

I had been given a sentence of, 18 and 18.

So 18 months on drug court and 18 months on DAPS.

And then if I completed all of that, I was free and clear.

And so, like, living life without any substances for the first time.

And I was just terrified.

Here at the Y, they were very, very gradually let my family reintroduce my son into my life, which is exactly how it needed to happen with the help of a 12 step program.

You know, I started to untie the knot that was inside of me and, like, figure myself out and who I am.

And then after a couple months, you know, they let me have an overnight here with him and just the things like that.

And it's like they're directly teaching me these things, but also indirectly just showing me how to be accountable.

Nothing stopped her as she has thrived from then on.

Ashley is full of love and light, and she has such, deep perceptions into life of recovery.

Not only does she share those so openly, but she's willing to help others.

And that's a great quality that you find a lot in the recovery community.

One of the gifts of my life today is that I work at my family's company.

And, for them to about three years ago, I think, you know, have seen that growth in me and, like, give me that position.

And so for me today is that I get to walk this line where I work my program as an employee.

And I work my program interpersonally.

When I graduated, they asked me to sit on the board of directors, which just sounds so fancy.

When Ashley showed up for her first board meeting, it was March 8th and she walked in and she said, do you realize that March 8th is my day of sobriety?

Like that was her anniversary?

Then she gave, input to the board that no one else probably even saw.

We asked Ashley to serve on our board because she was such a wonderful example of someone who work through the program, utilized all the assets available to her, really invested in the process, and came out on the other side.

I sponsor other women today.

Recovery is the number one thing that helped me to become the best version of myself.

Help me live each day and just try to be better than I was yesterday.

And then the main part of that today is like with my sponsors and then just like other women and the fellowships, is that I get to give back what was so freely given to me.

And like that is also part of my program.

Like Ashley’s success story is so inspiring, not only to me, but to women who live here now to know that anything is possible.

You just have to put in the work and believe in yourself and you can make things happen.

I just spent my whole life I didn't even understand that there was a different way to live.

And I found it here.

And I'm so grateful.

Our next profile is of Tijuanna Tolliver, Tri-State native and lifelong educator.

I am the proud principal of Lincoln K-8 school, and I love being here.

I love being with kids.

They give me an energy that I don't know what I would do without it.

So at this point, I'm enjoying my job here at Lincoln.

She has always had a just a heart for children in particular.

And so certainly education, and everything she does in the community along those lines is just you're seeing the real Tijuanna.

I grew up in Kentucky, Henderson, Kentucky, right across the bridge.

So when I was going to be a freshman, we moved from Henderson to the big city.

And so, I am a graduate, a proud graduate, Bosse High School.

My parents have always taught us growing up was education, education, an education that is something that no one can ever take from you.

I started off teaching at Earle Clemonts Job Corps Center.

I taught there for two years, loved it.

I left Job Corps, taught five years in Henderson because I wanted to give back to their community because my dad was still pastor over there.

He was pastor of Seventh Street Baptist Church, and so I still had a lot of connections with Henderson.

So I taught there for five years and then came to EVSC.

I was a teacher at Harwood Middle School for 12 years and then became assistant principal there for five, and then I was appointed to Stockwell and stayed there for 15 years.

She is a quiet leader.

She's not showy.

She doesn't show.

But what's going on?

She lets the outcomes of students and her schools prove what's going on.

So she's she just she does everything that she can for her staff or students or families or community.

And you don't know until you truly work with her.

In 2015, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

And so that, you know, when you hear the C-word, you automatically just, you know, you just melt.

So I had to go through chemo, surgery.

I was out of school for a while.

So that was really hard for me.

But I had a tremendous support system and even up on, you know, losing all my hair I wore my caps to school.

And, you know, kids just have a way of saying, you know, you're beautiful in spite of and on my worst days, the hugs, it would be like everybody knew that I needed them.

Certainly in the later years, she's had her health challenges.

And just like everything else, she takes it with a smile on her face.

She never complains.

And she looked at work as a respite, as something that I have to be better so I can go back to work so that I can go back to my kids right now in my life.

I can start with in 2020, I retired, I was principal at Stockwell Elementary School and had been there for 15 years, and I needed to give my dad some assistance.

And so I decided to retire.

And, May of 2020, if you're in her circle, being someone that she cares about, family, friends, she will fight for you tooth and nail.

She would never give up on you.

In September of 2020, my dad ended up passing away, and my husband also had a massive heart attack.

And so I was really needed, you know, I thought for my dad, but it ended up my husband really needed me during that time.

So it was great that I retired.

My husband recovered and is doing great.

So in October of 2021, after 18 months of being retired, I received a call from EVSC asking if I would take on the principalship here at Lincoln.

I told them I’d call them back and I talked to my family about it and talked to my husband and decided that yes, I would take over Lincoln in October.

She's a principal again now, and even, you know, she couldn't stay away.

And, it's about the kids.

And again, you know, when she it's about how she makes people feel and she's in it for the children.

When I look back, I feel like she she had a vision for, for my success and and just everything I go through and everything she helped me with.

Even as a teacher, I can just see Ms. Tolliver's guiding hands, holding who I am now as a as a professional.

If you do the math.

I have impacted lots and lots of kids.

I could tell you so many stories.

You know, I go in a restaurant, not see, the student, and then the waitress comes over and say, your meal was paid for by that person right there.

And I look in, it's one of my former students is it just has a way of making me will feel really proud of the things I've done and the impact that I've had.

Tijuanna is just an inspiring person.

She is one of the most giving people that you will ever meet.

I always said of her, there are whole lives that, she'll give you the shirt off of her back.

I love what I do, I love giving back.

I love being of assistance to people.

I love being helpful.

That's just me.

And I just enjoy it.

Despite other intentions, Kayleigh has always been drawn to plants and has opened her own garden shop.

I've been described as a person who doesn't realize she's grown up.

Like, like when a dog grows up and can't fit under the table like they used to anymore.

I'm originally from Alabama, but then when I was young, moved up to Illinois.

I grew up there pretty much the whole rest of my high school education.

My grandmother in Alabama, that I actually lived with when I was there.

She loves plants, adores them, had amazing azalea bushes all around the front of her house.

She was that kind of person where if you have a sick plant, she could take it and make it bright and beautiful again.

I grew up with this idea that women are just as capable of creating and building and doing all that sort of stuff.

Even in high school, I tried to apply to be, just a farmhand and because I was a girl, they were worried I wouldn't be strong enough to work around the animals.

She's always loved growing things.

She's an animal person.

She's a plant person.

She's a she's a caretaker.

I, wanted to be part of FFA, but couldn't afford the jacket, to be a part of it.

So my teacher at the time was like, hey, do you want to earn your jacket?

And I'm like, yes.

And he's like, well, if you just go in the greenhouse and water, you know, I'll, you know, pay you for that to earn your jacket.

That's how I got started in the greenhouse.

And after I earned my jacket, he was like, well, do you just want to keep working?

And I'm like, okay.

In senior year, I was almost voted the quietest girl in the class.

But someone won out.

And I think that's just because they knew her.

Then I went off to college and I'm like, I'm going to be a graphic designer or a business administration or all these sorts of things.

But life kind of kept drawing me back to the garden center.

So when I was looking for a part time job, I worked at a little place called Lilypad Gardens, and it was so cute and so adorable.

And I worked there through community college.

I'm able to kind of speak to people who really struggle with anxiety and depression and imposter syndrome and all that medley of stuff.

Because especially in my early 20s, I struggled very hard with my mental health.

And it took a lot of years and a lot of work to get to kind of an okay place with that.

And I think it's so important to not trust the negative thoughts in your head, like, take them very much with a grain of salt.

I ended up getting my master's degree through NIU for the Master's in Communication and Emphasis in Media.

I got my first paycheck and it was like a quarter of what it was supposed to be, and I'm like, I can't afford rent.

I'm going to go to Florida and hang out with my dad there.

And I got a job working at Disneyworld as a photo pass photographer.

So I got to kind of use my media background a little bit and just met all sorts of cool people.

And I worked at Epcot, which has the Flower and Garden Festival, and so I was really excited about that.

And plus all the landscaping and stuff across all of Disney World is just absolutely beautiful.

And then as the story goes, I met a guy who's really cute and he lives in Evansville, Indiana.

So I eventually moved up to Indiana, to be with him and came here, applied for a job at a garden center, worked there for a year, and went to work at another garden center, one of the garden centers.

They wouldn't even consider training me on the forklift.

They kept making excuses about it, but they would train all the guys.

And then wouldn’t train me, and I'm like, I just want to scoop mulch and help customers out, you know?

And, eventually when I worked at another garden center and they didn't have that weird kind of policy, I did get to learn the forklift and was very good at it.

In a way, Kiwi's was born out of a lot of things.

It was born because I've always kind of dreamed of having my own business, and I love plants, but also because I didn't bring myself to a point where I couldn't really consider working in a garden center where I have to lift heavy trees.

When she opened her store full on and just went full into it, it was her doing what she knew she could do, not what everyone else was telling her to do, or what the safe route to do.

And the thing you should do.

And she's proven that it's working.

She always wanted a little shop of her own, have her own cute product.

She has great taste.

And she just went out and did it.

Women typically aren't the owners of businesses.

I think it's gotten better over the years.

But there's still a long way to go before we see more equality in that area.

People had this idea of what, what it takes to be a business owner or a person, and it is seen as something very serious.

You got to be a boss woman and Kayleigh's not that she's she's the happiest, fun loving person around.

And people love plants.

So whenever I post a job opening, it gets bombarded with application and it becomes very difficult because so many people are so excited to work here.

And so I always feel really bad because I usually only have one position and just a ridiculous amount of applicants.

It's a wonderful problem to have.

And I wish I had a lot more openings for people to work here.

I've been told I have far too big of dreams which I say is B.S.

one of them is to have my own theme park.

But it would be like a blend of a Renaissance fair with an animation mention and a botanical garden.

And then one of my other evil plans is to have an aquarium.

One of my favorite aquariums is the Sumida Aquarium and the Tokyo Tower.

It is just absolutely magical.

I really think especially this area could use a aquarium.

And then of course I want to expand this.

This probably the more realistic of the several dreams, the amount of positive feedback I get from customers and people who come to visit.

It's just incredible.

Like like with retail, you know, you don't always get 100% with every customer, but being able to get as many as I do and create that positive, you know, knowledgeable experience with people just has been very, very heartwarming.

Like, I, I can't thank everyone enough for all their kind words and just coming to visit sometimes I'll just come to say hi.

Sherry Shen is an immigrant executive at Kaiser Aluminum and local organizer of the Chinese Community.

I'm working at Kaiser Aluminum as OPAC's manager, and, I oversees, continuous improvement team and also quality for the whole plant.

I grew up in Hangzhou, China, which is very close to Shanghai.

There's so many kids in China right?

Competition is fierce.

Every minute is a time for me to study.

... for me to invest in myself and the competition to Come to the States.

It was really fierce as well.

In 1996, I came to the States with $200 in my pocket.

I don't know anybody.

I just came to the states for the American Dream.

So I end up at University of Iowa.

I studied, mechanical engineering, and then I become a mechanical engineer for, Alcoa Davenport plant.

When I started working, I decide to go, for a second year into the, courses.

My, my husband and myself, we're pregnant.

We find out were pregnant.

So I was a first time mother and have a full time job.

So I need to make a decision.

If I go after this MBA.

I debated with myself for for a little bit, and I said, if I don't give it a try, I'd never know.

So even though it took me a little bit longer three years to finish this MBA program, I did it.

I got my degree and I got a call from, that time is Alcoa.

Warrick, ask me if I would like to come down here.

So I came down here, I thought, oh, this is a great place to raise a family.

And I worked my way up, from a, continuous improvement specialist and become a plant manager.

And then now I find my passion is really in continuous improvement.

A lot of times when I would get hooked into a situation emotionally, Sherry would bring me back and say, hey, let's let's work the problem.

She was constantly bringing me back to work in the problem.

What do we know?

What are the facts?

What's the current state?

Then the solutions present themselves.

I enjoyed that about Sherry.

Every step forward, there's always obstacles.

Big ones are small ones.

It's just how we view it.

Right?

And the biggest barrier is language.

People just cannot understand me.

So at a staff meeting I told everybody, I said, well, I really want to improve my English.

I want you be able to understand me.

Would you all help me and critique my English if I made any mistake?

If you don't understand it, just let me know.

So.

So they are just so good.

They they start telling me, you know, you did a grammar law here.

You pronounce wrong there and I really appreciate it - thank you for helping me.

I really didn't see her as, you know, a disadvantaged immigrant, disadvantaged female.

She was a leader, with the best.

When people around you feel passionate about something, I feel leader is the easiest job.

I just say you are.

You do this, you do this, you do this.

If you have a problem, come to me.

And they all did it.

So when I first came to this, to this area, there's not much thing going on for the Chinese, ethnic group, just nothing.

And, I think after two years that came to this area, I start knowing others.

I start having Chinese friends.

And, so I just wanted to do something.

So I reached out to them.

I said, well, if we can do something, make our Chinese community more connected because we are all first generation immigrants, we don't have our parents here.

We don't have any relatives.

Is there anything we can do?

So one idea came up is said, how about we do traditional Chinese New Year celebration?

We really want to all the Chinese families, when they are here, feel this is like a home.

They are not here alone by themselves.

They are a big family that we can help each other.

And she helped so many people.

Chinese people, in tri state area, three years ago, she opened up her house to let us study Bible together.

Twice a month for around 15 women.

Individually, we can do so little when we can engage others.

Work together, we can accomplish so much.

So I keep that in mind.

So my, You.

So.

So when I become a leader for the company, my leadership philosophy is a person can go fast, but a team can go far.

Sherry thrived in that environment.

She thrived.

She was able to bring her expertise on manufacturing to that environment and change the mindset of how you manufacture from people that have been doing it for 40, 50, even 60 years.

So, you know, we always think, you know, as a female in a male dominated company is that a square peg in round a hole?

Right.

So we have those kind of doubts.

But my think is always, what can I bring to the table?

So I was assigned to be the youngest plant manager when I started it.

We have, 250 employees in that plant and a fourth female.

And I'm one of those.

What I learned for a female in male dominated the company, it's the female not only bring the skill set, you know, for the work, also bring in a different perspective and a more inclusive environment.

We are all different.

It's just see how we can, be firm on the things that we believe in.

Regardless on the difference of our appearance, I pick up a little things from each of the people around me.

I just see people are so good.

I, you know, they are.

They all have.

They're really, a strong part that I can learn from.

I don't think I'm that inspiring, but I think every woman had their inspiring story.

Yes, yes.

Any woman.

Thank you can inspire others for those little things.

Post on your blog post on Facebook because we need that.

You know, we need to inspire each other to face obstacles in the future.

Our next profile is of Jodi Farrell, local business owner in a male dominated industry.

I grew up in a rural area.

I've been a tomboy my whole life.

As a matter of fact, my grandparents called me Toady instead of Jodi because I said I'd rather play with frogs than dolls.

My parents.

I have never seen a work ethic like my mom and my dad.

You earned what you got.

Nothing was ever given.

And so I that strong work ethic was embedded in me at a very, very young age.

I went to college in Louisville, and I graduated with a travel and tourism degree in marketing management.

Met my husband at that point, and that was pizza.

It was pizza related.

That's where he was.

I worked for many years in the food industry, and then we moved actually to the Evansville area for resources for our youngest son, was diagnosed with five disabilities at a very young age.

And he has completely beat all odds.

He's another one that was put in a box that he didn't belong in and proved everybody wrong.

We bought a home for sale by owner and he asked me if we were looking for work, and at that point, you know, we were in the process of selling our pizza stores.

He said that he knew somebody that was looking for sales and construction, hiring, sales and construction and was looking for a female that was a tomboy.

I was hired by the owner of the company, and then they, he assigned me at that point to who was my trainer, which was the manager of that, you know, of that facility.

And on day one, I showed up, have my notebook in hand, was ready to learn.

So he asked me, what's with the notebook?

And I said, well, I'm going to write things down, any questions that might arise so I can ask you later.

He said, put the notebook away.

He said, I don't even want you with me today.

You're never going to make it in this world.

And I went home and my husband Kevin sat down with him and I said, this isn't going to work.

I said, this gentleman hates me.

He doesn't want to work with me at all.

Needless to say, train me.

And I said, I don't know, you know what you want me to do with this?

Because I just don't see how it's going to work.

And he said, when have you ever quit anything in your life?

And I said, well, I haven’t.

And he said, we're not starting today.

What do we need to do?

So I went to the library and I checked out books on plumbing codes, building codes, remodeling, and I studied and I studied.

Just the competitive nature that she has.

I mean, the don't quit attitude that she is a fierce competitor.

I mean, there was no no doubt about it makes her a worthy opponent.

I had an appointment with a gentleman while a family that was 2.5 hours away.

The gentleman opened up the door.

He looked at me and his words were you’re Joe.

Yes, sir, I'm Jo.

He's like, yeah, this isn't what I signed up for.

And he turned around and close the door and walked back in the house and his wife answers the door.

She apologized, and she says, come on in.

He went straight - He goes, I'm going to go back out and I'm going to finish mowing the lawn.

So I stood in front of his mower and asked him to take his headset off.

And I told him, I said, I have given you 2.5 hours of my time to get here.

If you could please give me 15 minutes of your time.

And if you feel like I don't know what I'm talking about, I'll get on the phone right now and I will call and I'll have a man, you know, head this direction.

So he got off the mower, granted me my 15 minutes.

I ended up doing two bathrooms for them in that home.

And when I was leaving, he.

He said, I owe you an apology.

He said, you know, that was I, you know, I'm sorry.

He said, you definitely know what you're talking about.

And this is exactly what we we signed up for.

When I got promoted within that organization, I hired my husband to take my place in sales.

Then he became director of operations for the same company.

And so we thought, you know, we're running it and it's not ours.

And we sat down and he and I did a lot of soul searching and took the chance and took the tests and Kevin's, Kevin's a very good test taker.

And so he was able to get us through that so we could get our licenses and, and start I think being a full time business owner, working mother was a challenge, you know, raising kids that were very active in many things, but then yet also still trying to hold on to what at that point was my dream, you know, trying to find that balance that that's that's definitely a hurdle or an obstacle.

We started in our house, at a our kitchen table when we went out on our own.

One of our installers from that company ended up coming and talking to us and wanted to go in as partners.

So there are three of us that are business partners here.

She's very motivated and very motivational.

We don't feel like employees.

We feel like, you know, we're we're all on her team.

I was diagnosed in 2011.

So right when we started our business with a neuromuscular disorder, and it is progressive as well.

So, not letting that quit in me come through and just trying to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and put your foot on the gas, because I feel like I'm beating the clock in a lot of things.

So we've gone through a lot of things in life, and she just she doesn't ever stop.

She's just always going, you know, if I ever feel like I'm, I don't feel well or something, I don't, you know, I don't want to come to work or whatever.

I can always think, well, Jodie would be there just as of late.

Just within the last year, I had a partial mastectomy.

I had a, scare, I guess, in March, and, But they caught everything early.

The surgery was successful, and you name it, we have we've been through it and came out the other side stronger than we were going in.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard I'm crazy.

You're crazy.

You're crazy for.

Why would you want to do this?

Why do you want to put yourself through this?

You don't have to put yourself through it or you know you're ill. You need to slow down.

You need to rest.

You're here one time, and you've been given that gift of life, and it's what you do with it.

I think that really matters and not what other people feel like you should do with it.

It's what you've got embedded in your heart and in your head, and that's what you need to focus on.

So long term goals would just be to continue to move forward, in life, to continue to help others.

That's huge.

Our whole foundation of our company was based upon that, just keeping us servant's heart and trying to do the right thing.

That's that's my five and ten year goal.

Finally, we meet Melissa Morehead, more local activists and business woman who couldn't wait to enter the world.

I was born weighing 1 pound and 14oz, not having to be in NICU, in ICU, or having any other medical, issues or problems associated with me throughout my growth.

So literally, I say that life for me began in my mother's womb.

She was born September the 15th, 1971.

And my goodness, when they told us the weight of that baby, it was like, did I get any stitches?

They said, no, they anybody can, anybody could pop that out.

So they gave us a phone call one morning and said we could pick her up and bring her home.

Right now we are filming, in a church at Greater St. James.

And this is really where my foundation started, is here in the church.

This is where my mother and father brought us on Wednesday night, Friday night, Saturday, Sunday.

You know, as a little kid, I would laugh like, we are coming to church again, but I get it.

I get it now, and I see.

So it's really my foundation.

Went to numerous, of course, schools here in Evansville.

I started out at Howard Russo, which is now Joshua Academy.

My middle school years were at Glenwood and my formative years was at Bosse High School.

I was not the most athletic, but because I was really into athletics, and taught health and physical education.

Now, did I always do everything right as a student?

Absolutely not.

And I'm sure she can attest to that.

She was kind of full of herself.

She she had walked around.

She had an air.

We had a very, very, long, beautiful life.

And that's really how I can sum it up.

If I had to go back and change anything, I can honestly say I would not change anything at all.

It was just the best life that a child.

And I'll be honest with you, I even think in that era and that time frame, a child of color could have.

Then I left, went to the military, proudly served this country for nine and a half years in the United States Navy.

I don't know what that was about, but service to country was.

I was always good.

The challenges that I had to face in my life, I would say one, is being a mother at a young age, still raising myself and having to raise a child as well.

And so you add on also the fact that at that time I was in the military, it was hard for her to bring her baby home.

Her dad and I, we kept the baby, raised her and she would get her leave.

Time to come home or we would take the baby down there.

There were so many unanswered questions.

And when my life quickly changed as a blink of an eye, as a young, a young mother getting pregnant, in her teens and having a child and not knowing what to do.

But I've overcome.

And so again, from that season of my life, from motherhood, I've had a lot of obstacles.

I'm a survivor of domestic violence.

I don't wear that as a badge of honor, but I wear it to let you know.

And I actually I speak about it to let the next person know that if I overcome that, you can as well.

I have three beautiful children who, And my grandbaby, she knows how to work with them, whatever they're going through with, you know, different personalities and different challenges that they have within themselves.

The things that I've had to overcome with them individually and collectively.

Crazy as it is, they keep me grounded.

My father died unexpectedly ten years ago.

We always hear that it's going to happen.

Life happens.

But when it hits you at home personally, it changes other challenges that I've had.

Of course, being a woman of color, I'm very different.

Even with my hairstyle.

And people would say, well, how are you going to show up?

Unapologetically myself, Melissa is who she is.

Melissa have her own fashion.

She love to keep her hair short, and it taken me years to get used to that, and she just involved in everything that, that comes her way.

Giving back is a part of my DNA.

It is my love language.

I actually held a 50th birthday Covid vaccine drive and it was absolutely received with open doors with individuals in the community.

I do believe it was 16 individuals that received their Covid 19 vaccine.

And so again, it goes to just giving back.

I think, I am most proud that she finally working that is, is that she has a tremendous gift and that she is blessed.

And when you are blessed, your responsibility is to bless others.

What's next for Melissa is everything that I am doing right now.

But magnifying that to the 10th power.

So what does that look like?

Continuing to keep my hat in the political arena, whatever that looks like for me.

If that looks like on a state level, that's great.

If that looks like on a national level, that's even better.

Continue to be in focus in the community, engaged in the community, supporting, in the community and just showing up.

And so whatever that looks like, I am here for it.

These are just a few of the women in our area that have inspiring stories.

So who inspires them?

First and foremost, my mom, she, she was a single mom.

She worked 3 or 4 jobs at a time my entire life.

So, she definitely instilled a work ethic.

My life has exceeded every expectation I ever had.

And she was a driving force in that.

When I lost my mom, I kind of adopted a new mother, 88 years old and working every day in the field.

And on days when I don't feel like I can do it, I call her and she jerks a knot in my chain and reminds me that you can do anything.

You can move a mountain, just get out there and go to work.

Go do it.

My mom, I know that's probably a cliche answer, but it's absolutely true.

She was an incredible mom, incredible role model, incredible woman.

She faced a ton of challenges being one of the first women, one of the first women of color in her field to be in charge of people.

So she dealt with a lot and, you know, fought to come out on top every time.

For me, it is the other women in recovery with me.

When I got here, I thought I was so different and I thought I was so unique in my pain.

But, you know, we are all different versions of the same story, and that is the beauty of the fellowship.

I don't know what everybody who is on the fellowship is doing.

I don't know what they're doing.

My grandpa started the family business from scratch while putting himself through night school.

I can hardly wrap my brain around the gumption for sure that he had to just work so hard to make life so easy for the people that he loved.

I was just inspired by my parents, you know, they I didn't have to have special people outside my house to motivate me.

I'm driven by my parents, my siblings back in my hometown, there's this little, antique store that also serves tea.

And sometimes she'll bake cookies, and it's really, really cute.

And she has different areas where you can sit and have a little tea party.

She has all these, like, vintage hats that you can pick out every time you walk in, she says.

Welcome from wherever she is in the store, and you have no idea because there's so much in there.

But she's just such a warm hearted person.

I actually got a picture with her, after I opened my store because I. I'm like, you inspired me a lot.

I do have inspiration from Mother Teresa.

She did so much to the world.

So I said, wow, we can all do so much more.

So one of the quote I really like was she said, not all of us can do great things, but each of us can do little things with great love.

You know, just everyday life.

Every day we have those opportunities.

If we open up our eyes, there's little thi There are many women that inspire me, one being my beautiful, beautiful mother, Dolores, and the other being my mentor.

Now, Miss Sheila.

In my formative years, she was my teacher.

I respected her as a teacher, but I have a very high regard for her now.

As my mentor, one of my grandmothers in particular, she, hopped train from southern Indiana to Cincinnati at a very, very young age.

And then she became a homemaker, so to speak, for a wealthy family in the Cincinnati area.

And she was a nanny and a cook and, saved the money so she can furnish a house by herself while while her husband was at war.

And then after relocating back to southern Indiana, she became a Rosie the Riveter.

And, she actually worked on warplanes.

We hope these women have inspired you to learn more about the women around you, those who don't always get the limelight, but whose stories could be a great inspiration to you and to others.