Event Emcee Opening Remarks – April Walker, Philanthropy for the People™

Collaborate Cleveland’s Second Annual Women’s Breakfast - May 1, 2025

Good morning. Please continue to enjoy your breakfast while we get started.

I am April Walker, Founder and CEO of Philanthropy for the People and Development Consultant for Collaborate Cleveland three years running.

I am deeply grateful for the privilege of welcoming you to Collaborate Cleveland’s sold-out Second Annual Women’s Breakfast. We are thrilled to be back, albeit in a new venue, but with the same mission, deeper dedication, and even greater urgency around our work.

Work that supports and celebrates women, work to advance paid family leave and pay equity, and work investing in local leaders furthering gender justice whose contributions are always somehow overlooked and undervalued.

In so many ways, planning this event is a labor of love. Love of what happens when women are center stage, love of what it looks like we show up in friendship and sisterhood, and love of our ability to shape lives and careers beyond what patriarchy has passed down.

And oh, speaking of patriarchy. Surely, I am not the only one who sees and feels the grip of patriarchy tightening. The doubling down on efforts to eradicate women’s rights and gender justice has been especially piercing since November 2024, even more so for those of us whose identities intersect with compounding systems of oppression - be it racism, classism, ableism, and the like.

The thing is, as a Black woman, I have never had to look toward the nation's capital to see the poison of patriarchy and its toxic ‘ism friends rear their heads.

I can look at offices where I have worked, the healthcare system I interact with, and the steps I take to keep myself safe while traveling out of the country and down the street. I can refer to stories from my mother and my mother's mother, from aunts and friends about what patriarchy has cost them.

On their face, these are inspirational stories of wit, strength, and fortitude but they are built on a foundation of dreams deferred and diminished. These are silver linings forged from bad options, tools of survival and resistance passed down, proving to be hard, unforgiving places to land for the generations that would follow.

Patriarchy is not far off in some other place, nor does it find its strength in an executive order. It has names and faces that surround us. This shared inheritance means those of us in this room can and do reinforce patriarchal systems, whether at the ballot box or through silent compliance.

We would be naive to ignore the votes in local, state, and federal elections determined to fortify what is. And, as a Black woman, it does me no good to assume being a champion for all women means all women are champions for me.

But we are here this morning because many things can be true. Many things simply ARE true: the lament, fear, sadness, and, quite frankly, rage in the atmosphere since November and the need to keep doing the work. These things may not, and do not always, exist seamlessly, but that is what it means to be in community. That is, in fact, what it means to collaborate.

It is our hope that today’s conversation is a catalyst because, as our speakers will highlight, women are unrepresented at all levels of decision-making and in every political office.

But to be clear, we don’t just need more women in public service. We need women in public service who know standing in solidarity is not enough. We need leaders ready to fight against the active erasure of Black history and the contributions of Black women, ready to address anti-trans violence and workplace discrimination, ready to ensure our safety, health, and, of particular importance, bodily autonomy.

We need, as Mikki Kendall, author of Hood Feminism, reinforces, leaders ready for “nuanced, inclusive, and intersectional” conversations that “reflect the concerns of all women, not just a privileged few.”

If we can learn anything from patriarchy (and I doubt there’s much), it is to be an unapologetic and unwavering force. Certainly, in this room and on the Collaborate Cleveland team, we have just that.

© April C. Walker, 05 01 2025