Young people need role models need to see and understand the accomplishments of women and The value women have brought to society If you see it, you can be it But if You don't have anybody to look up to It doesn't give you the same kind of motivation to go out and make a difference It's important to have a Hall of Fame Because women's stories are still not told As strong and enduring as the Rocky Mountains they stood beside, as visionary as the views of the grand plains they looked across.

The women inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame are trailblazers whose work has improved and enriched our lives.

They are teachers, scientists, ranchers, leaders in business, education, religion, and the arts.

Women who have been recognized for their many contributions to our state, our country and the world.

I'm Reynelda Muse, and these are the stories of great Colorado women.

If a woman achieves in society and no one recognizes her, did she achieve?

Our history books are full of the stories and the exploits of men And before the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame existed, people didn't have access to that kind of information and recognition about the women who'd done comparable feats for the good of society It's important to have a Colorado Women's Hall of Fame because women need to be acknowledged for their accomplishments and written into history, and this is a significant way to do it.

we are writing women into history Women that were ignored or were not discovered.

And we have made them visible and contributed to the overall history of Colorado And there is not another institution in Colorado that has that focus The Hall of Fame tries to create history, living history where we tell the stories of people because you don't give kids just facts and figures and figure this is what history's all about.

They don't remember all those things But when you tell the stories of people and what they have done, what they've accomplished, what it was like for them, this brings history alive The Colorado Women's Hall of Fame really celebrates the entire life of the woman, not just one or two of her achievements And we're trying to tell the story of how they got there What helped shape them?

Who helped shape them?

What motivated them?

What challenged them?

What things got in their way, and how did they overcome those challenges We now have around 200 women who now have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

And so there's 200 women's stories that children are learning about.

adults are learning about, learning about the impact that these women have made.

Those women will serve as role models, because if you can see what women have done, then hopefully girls will want to aspire to make Greater contributions and be more involved In what's going on in the world.

it's very difficult to achieve when you don't see people like you achieving something similar and something similarly difficult.

The Hall of Fame makes that available to people and beautifully now to anyone.

Anyone can see it The hall has become much better known through some of the programs that we did, but especially through the Great Colorado Women Film series As a filmmaker, it's our job to highlight these stories.

And I tell everyone that these stories are so good, it's our job not to screw them up when we bring them to life Our films are been seen all around the United States and all over the world More people are learning about the women, learning about the stories, learning about their accomplishments The impacts that the Hall of Fame have made for women and society over the last 40 years are vast really impressive for what has been for many of those years a small organization I would really like to Applaud, ML Hanson And her group of ladies that created and established the Hall of Fame in 1985 and their ingenuity, their passion, and their courage If I think back to mid 80s Women were struggling Women were not recognized in workplace very much Men were the ones that were being inducted to a number of halls of fame, but there weren't any women there.

They were not represented.

and people didn't understand the huge contributions they'd made to Colorado as a state and a territory.

And I was state president of the Business and Professional Women at the time and went to a conference and we had this talk about the fact that we weren't getting a lot of acknowledgment And so I collected a group of women from BPW, Business, and Professional Women, to kind of do a market survey and say, what do you think about having a Hall of Fame?

So we could write women into history By and large, most of the women said, you know, I think we ought to do something like this And It happened We founded the Hall of Fame The group of women that helped Found it, that they were everything from entrepreneurs to educators we were all working on our careers and and trying to get someplace We convened them at our house And talked about what it might look like We were looking for pioneers Women who We're the first to do something, whether it was through their careers or through community work They had to have made some kind of effort that enhanced the reputation of women, and they had to be significant role models It needed to give women Hope that they would be acknowledged for their contributions I think one of the most critical things organizationally that was done is maintaining extreme independence and the quality of decision making.

Independence was important to us One of the halls of fame that was in a neighboring state.

One year, they inducted a woman into the Hall of Fame, who had been very active in reproductive choice.

And they were funded through a university, which, of course, came through the legislature And because The legislature didn't approve of who they inducted, They suspended operations for that Hall of Fame for 10 years ML created the Hall of Fame as a standalone organization that doesn't receive funding from any outside organization, which allows the selection committee to make their decisions on who gets inducted based on the merits of how their nomination forms come in We typically do a cycle every other year where we do a call for nominations As the nominations close, then all those nominations are provided to what we've identified as a selection committee where they have kind of a standardized process that's been used for a number of years where they go through and review all the nominations, they categorize all of them and they then make a down selection of the women Oftentimes you had to disappoint people when their particular candidate was not inducted into the Hall of Fame that could be a challenge at times, because everyone thinks that their Aunt Mary should have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, because they were such a remarkable person in that family, and we understood that.

The Hall of Fame is very, very picky about who they pick To be in the Hall of Fame My main involvement for a while was trying to get other people that I knew that thought should be in the Hall of Fame and sometimes I failed But I kept trying.

And with Jill Tietjen's help We got a very good woman in, Libby Bortz One of the principles that we wrote into the induction requirements was Diversity, not just of skin color, important, religious background, important but also of geography across the state.

We didn't want the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame To only represent Denver We wanted the women to be recognized whether they came from a big city on the front range or from a rural town In the hills or on the plains And one of the things that's great about the Hall of Fame is that we not only recognize contemporary women, women of today, but we also recognize women from our past, from the earliest days of Colorado.

So women like Chipeta, and Owl Woman up to today, like Susan Helms, who was an astronaut and spent time up in space.

So we covered the whole gamut of history of Colorado.

Interestingly enough, that even some of the historical figures, one of my sisters-in- law, for instance, works in theater, but she never knew that the woman Who the Tony Awards were named after came from Colorado Antoinette Perry And Antoinette is Tony She was the first.

She was a pioneer.

And because of that, other people could follow in her footsteps I'm particularly happy to see that we have reached out enough to become a very inclusive organization that knows that there are competent people in all groups and capable of people that come from all walks of life.

And those are the ones that you want exemplified in the Hall of Fame for all of our kids to emulate I just recently attended the launch of the latest nuclear sub which was sponsored by the women of the Little Rock 9, of which one of the women Carlotta LaNier is actually one of our Colorado Women's Hall of Fame inductees She was a woman who was as a child All she wanted was a better education.

And when she was in Arkansas Her family suffered through many, many atrocities because of that situation and she came to Colorado And now she's become one of the standard bearers for the hall in that she's been honored by Presidents of the United States The inductions, I think, are always the most important thing.

And it is about The ladies One inductee, I remember in particular, said that when she was inducted, it was the most important day of her life And the induction ceremony itself that ritual, it is saying to the people of the city of Denver Colorado and to the country at large and to the world, that these are very, very special women.

And these are women to be recognized and just seeing them light up with so much joy and exuberance when they're up there and they're receiving their award It's just what really makes it worth all of it For the first few years, the inductions were not a formal dinner, like we have now.

I remember maybe being able to get 30 people.

And now we have maybe 800 people in a banquet room celebrating the accomplishments of women It's very large now compared to what it first was The last one I went to was grand in all ways The energy the brilliance that come together at each of those events when inductees and their nominators speak about their experience overcoming the obstacles and the challenges It inspires people Being inducted meant a lot to me.

It was a surprise.

It was an honor.

It gave me a group of women that I felt compatible with but that I really, really admired, and it gave me the desire to make sure I lived my life as well as they did I was so flattered and so honored to be selected as an inductee into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame But what it gave me was a sense that other people thought that what I was doing, what my accomplishments were, what my contributions were, were significant And that's actually pretty life affirming It's a special event the women always come away from it, and they feel so good about the induction that it makes you feel good about the time and effort you put into making that induction event come about There are times when it's far more work as a volunteer than you would have or imagined.

But, we all are just so passionate about how we want to honor and celebrate these women that it's truly a labor of love There was an understanding among board members and volunteers who worked together to put on the events and to make sure that the information that the Hall of Fame collected and presented was seen and appreciated I think one of the things that has made the hall unique is it has a real approach to bringing history out to people in a variety of different ways Traditionally, the hall has had a couple of core programs that we offer.

We've got a series of traveling portraits that it kind of a tell a story that are much easier to travel to schools and libraries across the state that Exhibit can travel anywhere and be set up and available for folks to walk through and broaden their understanding of women's contributions Thousands of people came through and we displayed the portraits and the stories of all of the women We promote visits that way and try to contact organizations where their members can have a tour And then in addition to that, we had events.

So we would talk about women in education or women in the sciences or women in the arts Throughout the year, you can attend various events where living inductees Attend You can learn a ton directly from the inductees and their nominators.

And you can also enjoy interacting with other supporters at these events.

You know, one fun thing that we did that raised significant funds that pumped energy into the organization We had a garden party at Hudson Gardens and honored Jane Silverstein Ries A master landscape architect who had recently been inducted And it brought a whole garden set from Denver's community to the hall who could see a connection between creating beautiful environments and educating a community about what women can do that no one knew women could do We tried to enhance the Speakers Bureau and get out into the schools, get out into other public arenas and places and organizations to hear about the women, because people, once you went out and talked with groups about who the women were in the hall and let them see what they had given to the state People were always impressed by that, and they wanted to hear more about the women Every event of the hall has brings out more information about the hall.

More people become aware of the Hall of Fame So that was kind of a driver for me.

And as I went around the state talking with people about the women in the hall and talking about the Hall of Fame.

I realized that people didn't know anything about the women in the hall And they didn't know about the achievements and the contributions these women had made.

So we talked about how do we improve the visibility of the hall?

And so one day I thought, we're going to produce films on the stories of these women's lives And I had no experience in filmmaking, but I knew it was the right thing to do Luckily, one day I met a filmmaker Rick Higgins I was filming an event for the Women's Foundation And there were a number of speakers there that were speaking to these high school girls, and Betty was coordinating And it was just really Impressive to hear their stories because I was there with the camera and I was making a film, we got to talking about that, and Betty's ambition was to create a film series around this, and it just kind of came together naturally.

Granted, it took a number of years before we actually started rolling the cameras, but it was just a natural fit we were very much aligned with what we were trying to accomplish and very much aligned in the way we wanted to tell these stories Over the last 10 years, we've produced 31 films We've been nominated for Emmys 15 times, and we've won four Emmys, and we've won the Los Angeles Film Festival, Inspiring Woman in a film.

So Over a million people have seen our films and have learned about the Hall of Fame and learned about the women who are in the Hall of Fame And 2024, will be our seventh season of our films airing on Rocky Mountain PBS.

And we're very proud of that They're shown first on PBS, and then they go on the website for the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame And those films, which can be viewed at cogreatwomen.org are Always on file on that website It's wonderful to go online and to actually Look at the quality just the excellence in the technical production and also the information is really great When we hear from kids who have seen the videos and read the information It really is impactful My absolute favorite part of this whole process is showing my My children, the films for them to see who these women are and how they're revered by their friends and their family, telling their stories.

That's my favorite part.

I want my daughter and my son to grow up knowing that that they can be anything they want to be, and these women are showing them that These videos are extraordinarily both engaging and entertaining and informative and educational They're being used in classrooms My nephew is a school teacher and he uses them in his classroom Now kids in school can Learn from women What was important to them, what their journey was We have a curriculum that we have launched with National History Day that honors and celebrates the women of the hall The hall also participate as a judge for the statewide National History Day contest, and we select by grade level, a winner for the best project on a Colorado Women's Hall of Fame inductee The first year that we participated with National History Day, we had two young women that were high school students that Did a video project on Madeleine Albright They won the statewide Colorado Women's Hall of Fame award, but also They went on to nationals in Washington, D.C., and competed with students from across the country, and those two young ladies brought home the national prize for their project on Madeleine Albright And I should mention we actually do have a book with the biographies of the first 59 inductees, and it's called Women of Consequence.

But it's an old style It's not like the videos now that are able to reach so many more people When we started The reach was pretty limited There were times when People said, oh, we have a Hall of Fame.

I didn't know that.

Now you don't hear that quite as often Now The Hall is able to reach an unlimited number of people So we've increased our visibility We have found quicker ways to do things because of use of technology We actually have gained exposure in a lot of areas on social media, on Facebook along with our website We have Our Google Arts and Culture platform We've got the military women, we've got the suffrage movement we have partnerships with La Voz We have partnerships with Denver Urban Spectrum we have a partnership with Girl Scouts of Colorado We have a Girl Scout patch that was created, I believe, about six or seven years ago They've got a little criteria that they go through at the troop level for Girl Scouts to earn the patch.

The last I checked, there were about 700 patches that had Been awarded to Girl Scouts Since our 40th anniversary is coming up, we are rebranding the patch The hall faces challenges that many nonprofit organizations face.

There's almost always a funding issue facing nonprofits.

I just heard recently that 750 new nonprofits were established in Colorado itself in 2024.

So there's competition for funds among all of those nonprofits our primary sources of income are what's left over from our big gala through sponsorships and donations Our inductees have identified an area that they believe would be substantial to the organization, and it's been termed the legacy fund these inductees recognize how important it is for not just their stories, but for the Colorado Wom's Hall of Fame to remain in existence and remain a viable organization for generations to come And so the legacy fund has just started this year in hopes of being able to establish a foundational amount to support general operating costs and other opportunities, such as films or videos or different ways to for the hall to remain relevant and supporting our inductees The people who come to an organization that does this work share a mission personally, to lift others up, to bring joy to others Once you're committed to these women, and that never ends, that goes on forever.

And I think once you've been a part of the board, no matter whether your life goes in different directions or whatever, you're always going to have some kind of a strong affiliation and feeling support for the Hall of Fame I stay involved because I think the organization is critical It's critical for women.

It's critical for our whole society that we have an organization that recognizes and honors women our goal is to truly be able to represent all women that have made an impact in the state of Colorado The work isn't done.

There's still so many women that haven't been acknowledged that haven't been written in history and haven't really received the credit that they should My hopes for the Hall of Fame is it continues to be a cultural institution that contributes to the overall community of Colorado so that students grow up knowing What women have really done I just can't Thank you everybody enough for what they've done over the course of the last 40 years All of the leaders that came after me have made their own contributions And It has developed into more than I could have imagined For the future of the Hall of Fame I think there are no limits they're getting ready to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the hall