A frank discussion among five �ֲ���ý alumnae who’ve made significant contributions to women in sports illuminated how their experiences on courses, courts, and playing fields — including the hurdles they encountered — continue to influence and inspire them today. 

The many current �ֲ���ý student athletes who attended the recent Zoom session also got plenty of reminders that they should savor what they’re experiencing now.

“My favorite memories of �ֲ���ý are walking across the Quad to get to Alumni Gym and knowing that your only job for the next two hours is to focus on getting better and being a great teammate,” said Katie Burke ’03, who was captain of the volleyball team and now is the chief people officer at HubSpot.

“For the rest of your life, you never get two hours back in a day where your only job is to be a great teammate.” 

Featuring alums from the 1970s to recent times, the discussion — held against the backdrop of the 50th anniversary of Title IX’s passage in 1972 — was part history lesson and part feminist pep talk, with lots of practical lessons along the way. “You don’t get what you deserve; you get what you ask for and you get what you fight for and you get what you work for,” said Carolyn Campbell-McGovern ’83.

Sponsored by �ֲ���ý Athletics and moderated by Amanda Kaufman ’22 of Somers, Conn., a track and field captain and double major in psychology and gender and sexuality studies, the event celebrated National Girls and Women in Sports Day on Feb 2. 

Nancy Ingersoll Fiddler ’78: Push back, practice and persist

Nancy Ingersoll Fiddler ’78 was a Nordic skiing pioneer at �ֲ���ý. The college’s first female All-American, she later won 14 U.S. skiing titles and competed in two Winter Olympics. 

But all that experience and her excellence wasn’t enough when she retired from competitive skiing and began coaching. At ski meets, she saw gender roles playing out in familiar ways.

“I thought I was a leader but then I would go into these venues with male coaches and be designated to do things a woman coach might do like, stay back at the lodgings with the athletes while the men went and tested wax and did important things at the venue that I was actually very good at too.”

Fiddler says that she “had to fight my way in. I had to practice my get up and go.” But like other women who’ve raised their voice, Ingersoll found that she was dismissed “as being shrill.”

Nevertheless, she persisted. “I pushed through that. Maybe I lost some male friends along the way, but that’s the way it goes.”

Last year, Fiddler put her �ֲ���ý English major to use as a contributor to Trail to Gold: The Journey of 53 Women Skiers. It tells the story of the rise of women’s skiing on the international stage through first-person accounts by 53 female U.S. Olympic Nordic skiers who competed between 1972 and 2018.

As she surveys the Nordic landscape these days, Fiddler feels some measure of satisfaction. “There are so many women Nordic coaches in the NESCAC and Ivy circuit,” including �ֲ���ý head coach, Becky Flynn Woods ‘89. 

“And I’m just so happy to see that — it’s great. I feel that those people are being heard just as much.”

Carolyn Campbell-McGovern ’83: Pay it forward

At �ֲ���ý, Campbell-McGovern captained field hockey and lacrosse, becoming the college’s first All-American in women’s lacrosse. Now deputy executive director of the Ivy League athletics office, she looked back at the gender disparity in the hiring of coaches directly following Title IX.

When new women’s teams started looking for coaches, their newly increased budgets for coaching salaries were attractive to not only female coaches but also male coaches — who had, through past privilege, more coaching experience. 

The prevailing wisdom was, said Campbell-McGovern, that “we have to give it to the person who has more experience, and that was almost always a man. It can be a self-perpetuating thing.”

In a different way, it’s still playing out today, she says, where more and more coaches at the secondary-school level are men who became involved in coaching as interested parents, a .

 “A lot of female students come to college now and don’t have experience with women coaches, so they might express a preference for men as coaches. That can make it complicated from a hiring standpoint.” 

Campbell-McGovern encouraged athletes to learn about and honor the strides towards equality in sports. “Continue to fight, and continue to make sure that you pay it forward, so the next generation has it even better than you do.”

Katie Burke ’03: Your sports life may already be influencing your career

As chief people officer at HubSpot, regularly named one of the best places to work in the country, Katie Burke ’03 knows a thing or two about recruiting talented new employees. During her sophomore year at �ֲ���ý she got her first lesson in recruiting.

Burke was a defensive specialist in volleyball for �ֲ���ý when a coach asked her to host a talented high school athlete who was visiting �ֲ���ý for an overnight stay.

The student was being heavily recruited by other NESCAC colleges. “They rolled out the red carpet with a bunch of fancy stuff and tried to really wine and dine her,” recalled Burke, noting that others’ efforts emphasized facilities and other amenities.

“What we did was show her what �ֲ���ý really is. We were authentic, we were fun, we were quirky,” said Burke. “We took her to a Deansmen concert. And we went to a costume theme party.” And so on. By the next morning, that student had made a decision. “She declared that she was going to �ֲ���ý.”

The student? None other than Liz Wanless, �ֲ���ý Class of 2004, who went on to become a two-time NCAA champion in the shot put and who, an assistant professor at Ohio University College of Business who specializes in advanced analytics within sports organizations.

“What that taught me was if you can recruit people who are better than you are — and Liz, by the way, was light years better than I was at anything — your team gets so much infinitely better. The ability to recruit people is so important. It’s a huge, critical part of my leadership.”

Vantiel Elizabeth Duncan ‘10: Connectivity is key, even with your competitors

Vantiel Elizabeth Duncan ‘10 says she decided to come to �ֲ���ý because, unlike other schools, she was encouraged to pursue all her interests: music, academics, and athletics. As she applied to other colleges, she felt she had to pick one. “But at �ֲ���ý, I didn’t.”

So she sang in the college choir, majored in politics, and became a three-time NESCAC champion in the shot put and six-time All-American. In 2010 she was also a finalist for the NCAA Woman of the Year. 

In her sport, Duncan faced the presumption of masculinity in throwing events. Most of the time, when people think about women in track and field, Duncan said, “they really truly think of more of the track than the field. And when we think of specifically field events, I think we don’t really think about the events that I participated in.”

“It’s hard hearing that as a woman, and I just wanted to do my sport and not be thought of as an evil, mean principal.”

Duncan is now a community broadband program manager with VETRO FiberMap, which helps to track and map complex physical and virtual networks, which is key to meeting the growing demand for broadband. There might be a correlation between the connections she helps establish now and the ones she created on the field, and not just with her �ֲ���ý teammates.

Track and field meets are unusual for how much down time an athlete will have between or before their events. And at a track meet, the throwing circle might be a good distance from the rest of the meet. 

For shot putters like Duncan, that created opportunities for valuable and helpful inter-school friendships. “Often my biggest cheerleaders were the people that I was competing against,” she said. 

The takeaway: community is “who and what you define. The people who compete against you every day, every meet and make you better. And those are some of your biggest champions in the end.”

Amelia Wilhelm ’18: Stand up for yourself — and each other

The most recent graduate on the panel, Amelia Wilhelm ’18, became a national champion rower at �ֲ���ý (and a finalist for the NCAA Woman of the Year in 2018) because she and her teammates were in unison in and out of the boats. They supported one another, and did the work together. 

At the University of Washington, she’s in an M.D–Ph.D. program, a medical scientist training program that will put her en route to a “career as a physician scientist, where I’ll have a research group, ideally, as well as a clinical practice.”

Along the way, Wilhelm has been supported by mentors who have helped prepare her for her next steps, whether from �ֲ���ý, where she was mentored by Paula Schlax, the Stella James Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, or at Washington, where she says she “owes everything to the mentors that I have met and found along my way.” 

But as a woman beginning a career in science, Wilhelm has her eyes wide open, knowing that work is often distributed unequally according to gender.

Women have often been expected to “take on nurturing roles, or are socialized to and assumed to take on nurturing roles both in their career and at home. 

It even plays out in simple ways, like who cleans up a lab. “It’s assumed that someone else will take care of things, and usually that’s assumed of a woman, and that’s a huge issue.”

“I think there’s also a double standard, where women are criticized for “standing up for themselves and having the confidence to say what they believe” when the same behavior is lauded in men.

But her plan is to take on the gendered expectations placed on women in the sciences. And vanquish them. “I’m interested in doing away with them.” 

Katie Burke ’03 has spent much of her career learning what drives people to do excellent work. The , she oversees recruitment, company culture, and employee experience at the software and marketing company. She creates programs and structures to ensure that employees are both performing well and feeling valued.

“I’ve worked in companies where it’s very much about short-term gains, or short-term impact, or short-term financial results,” Burke says, “and I’ve worked at companies where people are very clearly a designated priority, and you feel the difference as an employee every day.”

The College Key’s 2019 Distinguished Alumna in Residence, Burke visited campus this week to talk with students, meet with faculty and staff, and give a public talk on how leaders can make their organizations more diverse and inclusive.

Katie Burke ’03 (center),��chief people officer at HubSpot who was this year’s College Key Distinguished Alumna in Residence, talks with Claire Sullivan ’19 (left) of Montville, N.J., and Sanika Shah ’22 of West Harrison, N.Y., during her March 6 residency,�� which included visiting this television criticism class taught by Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Stephanie Kelley-Romano. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

In a mid-afternoon interview, Burke, who graduated summa cum laude��and Phi Beta Kappa��with a major in American cultural studies, described her own path to the field of “people operations,” what women can do to advocate for themselves in business and tech, and how a company’s culture can stifle inclusion, or be its engine.

How did you become interested in working with and managing people?

I never had ambitions to have a career in HR or recruiting — so I like to think of it as good luck. I worked in politics, then I worked in marketing for a while.

But I’ve always been interested in what motivates people to do great work, and I’ve always been interested in what makes companies great. It turns out people and culture are the driving force behind both of those.

Even going back to my time at �ֲ���ý, I was always super-involved in campus activities and being a residence coordinator, even as a volleyball athlete. Anytime you play as part of a team, you think about what motivates people. Prior to joining HubSpot, I worked for a company called Exos. We trained the top athletes in the world.

We saw organizations that had holistic approaches to wellness. They really thought about injury reduction, sleep, nutrition, and fueling their athletes for long-term success. Then you saw places that were a little bit more churn and burn. It was my first exposure to thinking about the fact that there were two different ways to get to a championship team: One was short-term gains, and one was thinking about long-term assets.

HubSpot places a lot of emphasis on company culture. How do you define culture?

It’s the promise you make to your candidates and to your employees and the way in which you deliver on it every single day. What that actually means in practice is the decisions that drive the company. It’s the people who get promoted. It’s how mistakes get treated. It’s how decisions are made, and who makes decisions.

To me, it’s not just the posters on the wall. It’s how you live those ideas and bring them to life in every single way. What you have to do is match the rhetoric of what you’re saying with the reality of what you’re delivering. That’s a daily effort and a daily practice.

How do you think about diversity and inclusion in the context of culture?

Culture can be a huge asset in diversity, but it could also actually be a weapon. Sometimes organizations use the notion of “culture fit” as a reason to keep people out who aren’t the same as the existing employees.

Corporate culture “can be a huge asset in diversity, but it could also actually be a weapon,” says Katie Burke ’03, the College Key Distinguished Alumna in Residence. Here, she visits a course on television criticism taught by Stephanie Kelley-Romano during her March 6 residency. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

The way we think about that at HubSpot, and the way we’re trying to lead the industry to think about that, is to think about culturally additive people. If you think about culture fit, you’re looking for people who speak the same language you do, use the same expressions, have the same experience.

What we’re looking for is people who challenge us to make it better. We want people who meaningfully add to it and change it and transform it over time.

What does having an inclusive culture look like?

An inclusive culture means that regardless of who you are, who you love, what your national origin or race is, what your gender is, it feels in every interaction like the company is conspiring for you to succeed and belong — not just that it meets a checklist of requirements, not just that they don’t say anything that’s exclusionary, but really that every signal they send makes it abundantly clear that you cannot just belong in that organization, but thrive.

What can companies do to support women in particular?

Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good. People wait for years and years to have the perfect women’s initiative, because they don’t yet have enough female executives. One of the things we did at HubSpot was to make a commitment to do the work even when we weren’t quite ready to say, “Yes, we’re ready for prime time.”

Your executive team should make it clear both why gender diversity is important and also what they’re going to do. Those things can be really simple commitments. You can get started by bringing in female speakers. At HubSpot, for International Women’s Day we have a huge event that specifically celebrates women aspiring to the highest levels of office, right from the start of their career.

We have a bunch of amazing women with board leadership roles talk about their experience, but we also provide tactical advice to make sure more junior employees are considering board positions early and often in their careers. When you aspire to the top echelons of business, you’re far more likely to get there

“We want people who meaningfully add to the culture and change it and transform it over time.”

We also host a workshop where both men and women can write LinkedIn recommendations for women that they either work with currently or worked with in the past. All those are small things that we’re doing to lead the way on that front.

Katie Burke ’03 talks with students during her visit to a class on television criticism taught by Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Stephanie Kelley-Romano (right). (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Then there are things like how visible women are in your organization and leadership. How often do you release data about your gender diversity? What does your current parental leave or flexible work schedule look like? What stories are getting told about your employee experience? If you look at our social media accounts for HubSpot Life, our employment brand accounts, you’ll see amazing women from around the world sharing their stories and perspectives.

What can women do to advocate for themselves?

One of the things I suggest to women is to consider taking micro risks. Flex your confidence like a muscle on a regular basis. That can be as simple as practicing asking for a speaking opportunity, asking to network with someone that you might not otherwise, or asking what it might take to get a promotion or raise.

Women will say, “I asked for it, and I didn’t get it.” The ask itself is a huge victory unto itself. Once you get better at that, it becomes easier to find a place that will meaningfully invest in your success — if the answer is “no” at first, maybe it’s “yes” a year later. Flexing that confidence muscle earlier makes it easier once you have a bigger jump to make.

You’ve often spoken about the importance of books. Why is it important to read books if you’re in business or tech?

It’s easy to get really wrapped up in tech, in the world in front of us, and to look at things too closely. One of the best things that reading does is that it broadens your perspective. The decision you’re making probably isn’t that big of a deal in the greater context of the world, and thousands of people have experience that can help inform it.

My boss, our COO, is fond of reading historical books rather than current business books, because he believes that there’s very little you can’t learn about decision-making based on how history has played out.

“Flex your confidence like a muscle on a regular basis.”

I also really believe in using reading to diversify your perspective and representation on who you learn from. I make sure I’m consuming books written by women of color, by LGBTQ authors, by trans authors. We use our book club at HubSpot to make sure that we’re hearing from voices that aren’t necessarily as much promoted in the broader business world.

A good example is that The Hate U Give was one of our first books for Black History Month last year. It brought up perspectives on how young women of color factor into the arguments around gun violence and police brutality, and it led to interesting conversations that you might not otherwise have in the workplace.

To me, that’s a real gift. I want to be a part of workplaces where reading and literature and film and art inform the experience.

In the battle of the benefits, tactics are shifting — The Boston Globe

, the chief people officer at HubSpot, for its story on the changing nature of company perks.

Reporter Scott Kirsner says that “offering dazzling benefits,” like beer taps and catered lunches “just for the sake of grabbing a candidate’s attention” isn’t the goal any more. In the Boston area specifically, firms are finding that what workers want most are benefits that create work-life balance.

Katie Burke ’03, chief people officer of HubSpot, speaks about leadership at a recent Boston �ֲ���ý Business Network event. (Paige Brown ’96 for �ֲ���ý College)

“The thing we are working the most on for the year ahead is infusing flexibility into our experience,” says Burke. That includes “exploring more remote work options” and “making no travel or minimal travel an option for senior positions.”

Burke notes that while “it’s much easier” for the media “to talk about the new sexy trends” related to employee benefits, “no one talks about the hard, gritty work of training good managers or training people to develop new skills.”

U.S. healthcare has an immature business model. Here’s how to fix it — The Hill

Michael Katz ’84

Pediatric anesthesiologist Michael Katz, in an , says that “Washington’s raging battles over healthcare finance reform are missing a fundamental point.”

The real problem with U.S. healthcare, he says, is the “fundamentally flawed business structure underlying its delivery.”

The answer, he says, is to force the system to evolve through new policies. Maturation means creating “a highly consolidated industry,” rather than the current fragmented one, that “will drive health systems to compete on price.”

A “moral obligation to achieve health equality.”

The goal is not just reducing costs. Replacing the current, expensive “fee-for-service payment model with a value-based system” will give patients “higher-quality, lower-cost care with better health outcomes.”

The imperative to achieve a more-healthy society, Katz says, means that our leaders should feel a “moral obligation to achieve health equality.”

The rare equestrian product that hits the mainstream — The Plaid Horse

The , owner of the equestrian-products company EquiFit, about ShouldersBack, a posture-improving device she invented in 2001.

Since then, ShouldersBack has “successfully crossed over from the equestrian world to the mainstream market, with mainstream sales exceeding equestrian sales,” says editor Sissy Wickes.

“I love the horse industry, and that’s what we are about,” Cherubini said. “But, it is fun to have a product that crosses over.”

Worn like a vest, ShouldersBack gently encourages equestrians to maintain good posture, which helps horse and rider work together.

EquiFit has since developed “an iconic brand of [horse] boots” known as the T-Boot, “EquiFit’s flagship product…[a] the foamed-lined, non-chafing, washable boot” that is now “de rigueur for equestrians nationwide.”

The intent of any changes will be to elevate �ֲ���ý College — Lewiston Sun Journal

When the Lewiston Sun Journal , the focus was on any changes that Fein might make.

“I think it’s incremental change,” Fein told Assistant Sports Editor Lee Horton. “When you’re 20th”�� list of the nation’s best athletics programs, “logic would say don’t come in and try to change a whole lot.”

Director of Athletics Jason Fein stands before a portrait of early-20th century Director of Athletics Royce Purington, Class of 1900, in the lobby of Alumni Gym. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Horton said that the intent of Fein’s changes “will be, of course, to elevate �ֲ���ý College.”

Fein says the focus is “how can we best support (the coaches) to make the improvements they need to? How do we get from there to there? It’s incremental, which is a cool challenge as opposed to being down here and we want to go up here.”

To end racism, focus more on new policy — Maine Public

Before speaking in the Gomes Chapel on Oct. 23, historian and author Ibram X. Kendi .

Efforts to end racism in American have “focused on trying to educate away the racist ideas” through “education and love.”�� The problem is, he said, is that producers of racist ideas tend not to create them out of ignorance or hate but from “economic, political, and cultural self-interest.”

Kendi suggest that when “we think about these mass-produced racist ideas and these mass-produced racist policies…it’s more effective to challenge the policies than it is to educate away these ideas.”

Historically, he says, “we’ve actually been able to undermine racist ideas by undermining racist policies. And I think that’s where we should focus moving forward.”

Founder of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, Kendi won the National Book Award for Stamped From The Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.

This �ֲ���ý tweet from the Ibram X. Kendi talk on Oct. 23 has been retweeted 421 times, thanks to an initial retweet by social activist and former NFL player Colin Kaepernick.

Solving a parenting challenge with an innovative database of diverse picture books — Lewiston Sun Journal

The , who, with a team of colleagues has created the Diverse BookFinder, a searchable database of diverse children’s picture books.

The purpose of creating the database is about more than finding good bedtime reading.

“There’s a lot of evidence that reading diverse picture books can make it easier for kids to interact across difference, help them develop empathy and better prepare them for our changing world,” Aronson told reporter Lindsay Tice.

For Krista Aronson, an inspiration for a new direction for her research came from her daughter’s relationships with white and Somali children at school. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

��

�ֲ���ý dishwasher raises $105,000 for the Dempsey Challenge — Lewiston Sun Journal

“David Gervais has worked in the college’s kitchens for 39 years, since graduating from Lewiston High School,” . “He’s also a Dempsey Challenge fundraiser. A very good one.”

In nine years, Gervais has raised more than $105,000.

Held annually in October, the Dempsey Challenge running and bicycling fundraiser supports the Dempsey Center, which serves, free of charge, anyone affected by cancer.

It’s sponsored by actor, philanthropist, and Lewiston native Patrick Dempsey, who received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at Commencement in May.

He jokes that he and actor Patrick Dempsey are “like that,” crossing his two fingers. “(He’s) super nice,” Gervais told Skelton. “Every year at the (fundraiser) banquets, he would come over and say hi. There were a lot of girls around and they would say, ‘How do you know Patrick Dempsey?’”

David Gervais of �ֲ���ý Dining Services poses with Patrick Dempsey in October 2016. (Lewiston Sun Journal photo)

How can a recent college graduate become a leader, and, once in a leadership role, how can she be effective?

At a panel in Boston on Sept. 28, Lisa Utzschneider ’90, former chief revenue officer at Yahoo; Peggy Koenig P’17, co-CEO and managing partner at Abry; and Katie Burke ’03, chief people officer at Hubspot, shared their experiences as leaders in their companies and offered advice to young women starting their careers. Here is some of that advice:

1. Be prepared and flexible.

To discover your strengths and interests, Koenig said, “get as many different experiences as you possibly can. Expose yourself to as many disciplines — like the liberal art education you get at �ֲ���ý — or as many different styles of doing things as possible.”

2. Show, Don’t Tell.

Whether you’re looking for a job or promotion, Burke said, “show, don’t tell.”

In other words, don’t��just talk about a possible interest. “One of the blessings and curses of a liberal arts education is that we are all curious people, she said.

But a career in not based on what “you might be interested in. I want to hire people at Hubspot who have demonstrated their interests by actually doing something about it.”

3. Train yourself to speak up.

Speaking up, Utzschneider said, is like working out. “I worked it like a muscle,” she said. “I said, ‘This is going to be like exercise every single meeting. I’m going to write out my notes; I need to make sure I make three points in the first five minutes.’ I did it over and over and over until I got to the point where it’s second nature.”

4. Ask smart questions.

Utzschneider is eager to give advice to younger leaders, but they should come prepared, she said.

“The more prescriptive the person is — [telling me] specifically what they need versus a vague, ‘Hey, let’s have coffee and I’ll learn about your 20-year career,’ — the more I am able to contribute and give back and doing it in a way where it’s constructive and it’s not a waste of time.”

Burke agreed. “Show another person respect by not just asking for their time but doing a little bit of homework and asking��some really smart, thoughtful questions.

5. Find a sponsor.

Try looking for sponsors, rather than mentors, Burke said.

The two are different: “Mentorship is connecting with people you admire. Sponsorship is asking those people to match what you’re talking about with action and advocacy on your behalf. It’s asking people to open doors for you or recommend you for positions.”

6. See everyone as a teacher.

“Rather waiting for the second coming of the person who can teach you everything that you need to know,” Burke said, “assume that everyone you meet knows something you don’t,” and learn from them.

7. Lead by example.

The best advice Koenig ever got was that everyone was always watching. “You lead by example, and that means how you act and behave and treat people is really what people are going to key in on.”

8. Know your workplace.

At Microsoft, Utzschneider started at the “most junior level that you could start at. I walked miles in the shoes of almost every function on my team. I think that makes me a very authentic leader.”

9. Communicate. And communicate.

“I try to be as transparent as possible,” said Utzschneider. “I over-communicate. I communicate often. I try to lead the way I want to be led.”

10. Create opportunities for other leaders.

There is enough room for everyone, Burke said. “I believe there are places for women, and the best male leaders create space for these female leaders. The best men I ever worked for, including the men I work with now, create active opportunities.”

11. Think big.

Try for the grand slam, and it’s OK to strike out once in a while. “Anyone can have average ideas. So do courageous, remarkable things,” said Burke, who added that she’s a “big believer in crazy big ideas: that power of loneliness and courage, being the person raising your hand and saying, ‘I have a really good idea and I don’t actually care if anyone else thinks I can do it.’”