Toilynn O’Neal: The Magic of Art, Science, Education, and Community

Toilynn O’Neal is fully invested in the city of Cincinnati. She’s worked at St. Ursula Academy in Walnut Hills for the past 20 years and currently serves as their director of diversity. She works for the Cincinnati Visitors Bureau, helping to develop multicultural entertainment for Fountain Square in the summer. She’s the interim executive director of the Queen City Foundation, an organization devoted to helping young people succeed. Toilynn herself benefited from QCF, and she says it’s one of the reasons she is who she is today, doing what she’s doing to elevate young women in Cincinnati and inspire them to become leaders and community change agents.

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Behind the Scenes with Gild Collective: The Fight for Gender Parity

At Gild Collective, we work with organizations to deliver women’s leadership and gender diversity programming and strategy. Most often, we work with women’s initiatives (sometimes called women’s networks, employee resource groups... the list goes on). Sometimes this is a formal program that is mandated by HR or a diversity and inclusion team within the organization. Other times, we are working with a passionate group of employees who are working to drive progress in their companies to see more women rise.

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On Second Thought: Let’s Catch up With Megan Park

Roughly seven months after we last talked with Megan Park, we spent a beautiful April morning at the Ivy Hills Country Club catching up with the producer and storyteller and experiencing her project Putting Women in Their Place in action. Putting Women in Their Place is project that produces campaign videos for progressive, pro-choice women running from office. We met with Megan – in the midst of shooting videos for several candidates – to catch up on her many exciting projects, motherhood, and more.

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Dora Anim: Giving Reimagined

We huddled around a table at Fountain Square amid the usual noise to find out what has driven Dora, chief operating officer at the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, to all that she has accomplished. As a vibrant guitarist played and groups of friends chatted nearby, we carried on a lively conversation surrounding our communities and the strategies for addressing those that need more attention. Dora is oftentimes at the center of the community both in her professional role and personal growth experiences, but that doesn’t stop her from taking a step back to the behind the scenes action of it all.

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#SerendipityScrapbook Challenge

Hello! My name is Kate Ducey and I am the current editorial resident here at Women of Cincy. 

Part of being a resident is completing a capstone, so for my capstone, I've decided to reach out to Women of Cincy readers! 

My capstone is titled "The Serendipity Scrapbook" and it is all about getting people to look at their everyday lives differently through a series of small challenges.

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8 Female Filmmakers: Hannah Blair on Making Your Work

On a sunny spring evening, I walked through aisles of brightly colored international candies, hundreds of varieties of wine, and an array of flower-shaped cheeses to find Hannah Blair sitting at a table near the coffee shop inside Jungle Jim’s International Market. After swapping stories of the peculiar displays we’d each passed on the way in, we grabbed a seat and chatted about small town life, filmmaking, and what it means to “make your work.”  

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Stories Behind the Booze: Gather Cincy’s Peggy Bustamante and Meg Cooper

Batman and Robin, peanut butter and jelly, popcorn and movies – all of these duos showcase unique flavors or talents while simultaneously balancing each other out, much like the mother-daughter partnership behind Gather Cincy. From renovations to wellness classes, daughter Meg Cooper and mother Peggy Bustamante have worked together over the past year to open Cincinnati’s first coworking space that offers childcare on site. Gather Cincy wants to bring working men and women together through a shared passion of hustle, hard work, and collaboration.


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KellyAnn Nelson: Music Is a Superpower

KellyAnn Nelson believes in empowering people and helping them to access their superpowers through music. She is the founder and artistic director of Young Professionals’ Choral Collective of Cincinnati (YPCC), an open access nonprofit choir. YPCC has a roster of 1,100 young professionals (YPs) who sign up to sing in any or all of the organization’s three arms: 1. Non-auditioned cycles which run 6-8 weeks each; 2. Community singing, which takes place around town upon request, whether at breweries or on the steps of Music Hall; and 3. The auditioned chamber choir. KellyAnn is also the managing artistic director of the Cincinnati Boychoir. Through these dual roles, she is helping to create a community of inclusion in Cincinnati.

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8 Female Filmmakers: Stumbling onto Set with Jen Day

With glasses, long dark hair with bangs, and a red lip, filmmaker Jen Day was serving up some serious “New Girl” vibes when we met her at Nation Kitchen & Bar earlier this summer. We found a corner near the front windows, and with our photographer Heather’s encouragement, I tried a whiskey Moscow Mule for the first time – it was love at first sip. We nestled in with our drinks, took in Nation’s inviting atmosphere, and got right down to the nitty-gritty of being a woman in the city and what it means to tell unique stories through film.

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8 Female Filmmakers: Allyson West on Creating the Cindependent Film Festival

“So the who, what, where, when, why is it’s a three-day film festival at the Woodward Theater, August 23, 24, 25. It’s being designed to attract filmmakers, as well as community members. It’s really important to connect storytellers in and outside of the industry. It’s no different than sitting next to somebody watching a movie and then turning to them and being like, ‘Oh my god. Did you just see that, too?’ You get to talk to storytellers, and that’s all connected through the human experience and the human perspective.”

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