Kelly O'Donnell
Being a part of the 2017 Vira I. Heinz cohort, Kelly travelled to Dublin, Ireland for 8 weeks studying with Arcadia University in their Dublin Internship program. While in Dublin, Kelly completed a Business and Entrepreneurship class and a Sales and Marketing Internship at Mediateam Ltd, a small Irish marketing company. During her time abroad Kelly focused on women in the Irish economy and studied what barriers they faced when trying to gain agency and what forces are still enabling the barriers. Through her business class Kelly researched the reason causing a wide pay gap for Irish women. Kelly found that cultural influences such as religion have caused many women to stay home taking care of children. One of the barriers for women to re-enter the work field is the “motherhood penalty”, which is when women leave work to take care of children and lose work experience that employers look for. Another factor is the outrageously high prices of child care in Ireland. Kelly connected her research to real life stories from employees at her internship. Kelly’s Heinz Programming Area was Arts and Culture and through travel Kelly visited the many counties of Ireland. During travel she saw many musicians perform within pubs, met locals and visited art galleries and museums. Kelly experienced true Irish culture as she visited small villages, towns and cities. Through the Vira I. Heinz program Kelly accomplished her lifelong dream of tracing her family history back and seeing where her family originates.
CEE Title: Kiss My Harassment
Our CEE was designed to address sexual harassment and connect different forms of harassment on a local level to a global perspective. The three recipients from Chatham discussed a form of harassment they experienced while abroad. Kelly O’Donnell studied in Dublin, Ireland and experienced workplace sexual harassment during her sales and marketing internship. Maria Taylor spoke about incidents of street harassment while studying abroad in in Morocco. Carina Stopenski discussed forms of institutionalized harassment and incidents that occurred while Carina was studying in South Africa. After each awardee shared their testimonial of the form of harassment they experienced, there were round table discussions. There were guiding questions on each table to help create a safe space for audience members to share stories. After each round table discussion ended, there was a guest speaker to address the topic of sexual harassment and share resources. The awardees wanted to ensure that the community members who attended Kiss My HarASSment left with the knowledge of how to combat harassment. After discussing work place harassment, Kelly O’Donnell shared resource sheets provided by Chatham’s Office of Career Development. Carina Stopenski spoke about institutionalized harassment and afterwards a Green Dot Facilitator spoke to the audience. The Green Dot Bystander Intervention Program is designed to help change the culture associated with sexual harassment to intervention instead of prevention. The Chatham’s Women’s head soccer coach, Betsy Warren, spoke to the audience about the Green Dot program implementation at Chatham. Chatham’s Public safety officer, Sargent James Madison, also informed the audience on ways to stay safe and what laws protect against harassment.