Agents of Change: Lessons from Five Pioneering Professional Women

During Women’s History Month, it is traditional, and valuable, to salute historical pioneers—women who were the “firsts” (and best) in their professions and often overcoming barriers and prejudice to succeed against overwhelming odds. During this #metoo year, it has been all the more important to remember and celebrate them. As Women’s History Month draws to a close, lessons can be extracted from their accomplishments and leveraged for future best practice.  

 At Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies, we are creating research and programming that instigates greater awareness, develops market-responsive solutions, and influences policy revisions that address the specific challenges women face in contemporary workplace culture. 

The road map for setting and executing gender equity goals originates from these revolutionaries and others like them. The five women profiles below, each ambitious agents of change, used education, non-traditional operational strategies, and leadership opportunities to alter and innovate the way we work. 

 Frances Perkins

Dubbed “the woman behind the New Deal,” Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve in a U.S. Presidential cabinet. She joined Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration as Secretary of Labor in 1933. Interestingly, her rise to the White House was, in some part, due to an unexpected career-pivot. 

Perkins was a 1902 graduate of Mount Holyoke College, majoring in chemistry and physics. After graduation, she headed west and began teaching—following one of few professional paths for women at the time. But, after beginning research into children’s malnutrition, she enrolled in a master’s degree program at Columbia University, studying economics and sociology. President Roosevelt, then governor of New York, tapped her for a job that positioned her to investigate the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—which she had witnessed first-hand. Perkins accompanied Roosevelt when he was elected president.

Perkins’ Labor Department literally crafted the infrastructure of employment in the U.S.: setting minimum wages, designing unemployment programs, and outlawing child labor. She is also credited with co-founding the Social Security system. The lessons to be learned from Perkins? Never stop learning and, more importantly, don’t just “think out of the box.” Build the box yourself! 

Katrina Adams

Professional tennis player, Katrina Adams, was an early success in her sport—building a healthy career on the tennis circuit, and, among other achievements, winning 20 career Women’s Tennis Association doubles titles between 1988 and 1999. Since then, she has become an outright superstar in competitive athletics. Her triumph has come from enhancing her skill set and leveraging professional contacts and knowledge into advancement opportunities for herself and, more importantly, for the next generation of tennis stars. 

Three years ago, she assumed the helm the United States Tennis Association (USTA) as its chairman of the board and president. She served as the first African-American and first former professional tennis player in that role. The position followed decades of her work as a coach, television commentator for the Tennis Channel, and volunteer for the USTA. Perhaps her biggest contribution was helming the nonprofit Harlem Junior Tennis and Education Program (HJTEP), which seeks to diversify the sport, boost the participation and talents of American players, and “build champions in tennis and in life.” Stressing an education component, HJTEP requires participants to keep a minimum 2.0 GPA and boasts that 60% of its program graduates go to college. In short, Adams has already significantly and radically influenced tennis—with more innovation to come!

Edith Gregor Halpert 

Women have played a key business role in the arts, and much of that history is undocumented and its pioneers uncredited.

In 1926, at the age of 26, Ukrainian-born Edith Gregor Halpert opened a pioneering American art gallery in the then-unlikely neighborhood of Greenwich Village. Courting curators and collectors, she bucked the Eurocentric trends of the time by championing avant-garde U.S. painters, female artists, and African-American artists. The outlook for her success was chided as improbably, but she she prevailed.

By 1941, Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series, today an acknowledged masterpiece documenting the early 20th-century move of the African-American community north, debuted at her gallery. In a stunning deal, the Museum of Modern Art and The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., almost immediately bought the 60-panel series. Not only was her downtown gallery a game-changer for more than four decades, but Halpert’s personal papers, business records and detailed exhibition histories ended up in the Archives of American Art. What is the lesson? Defying conventional wisdom and trusting her own instincts on where to be, and who to show, Halpert was able to change her profession and art history.

Hattie A. Burr

It was 1886, and the suffragette movement had a problem: no funds. Harriet Burr originated a solution that turned women’s traditional roles on their heads—creating and selling The Woman Suffrage Cook Book. By engaging prominent women members like Elizabeth Cady Stanton to offer tips for roasts and muffins, alongside quotes on women’s rights, Burr injected their rabble-rousing thoughts into the hands of hundreds of women who might otherwise have been skittish about the material (The New England Historical Society dubbed it “recipes for subversion”). Now recognized as a sophisticated fundraising strategist, Burr learned best practice strategies, expanded the project over time, and scaled the effort to others who similarly adopted her ‘troublemaker-in-a-teapot’ model. The movement proceeded to be hugely successful—spawning multiple regional editions and teaching women who worked on the cook books the skills of publishing, advertising, sales, and marketing.  

Alice Hamilton

Female scientists were rare at the turn of the 19th century, and crusaders for occupational health and safety were almost unheard of. Toxicologist Alice Hamilton, however, saw how radically the workplace was changing and began to research the conditions in factories—particularly the national spike in lead poisonings. When the factory owners barred her, she simply found another data source—garnering her data from local hospitals. Over decades, she similarly traced the impact of environmental toxins like carbon monoxide and benzene on health. Documenting their effects led to regulation of their use. 

 Hamilton’s work prompted Harvard Medical School to recruit her as their first female faculty member in 1919—even though the institution didn’t accept women students until decades later. 

 As Women’s History Month draws to a close, it is vital to research, discuss, and incorporate the legacy of these pioneers, and the lessons they have taught us, into our practice, our teaching, and our careers.