Work

“Work” is a value-laden term that has changed drastically over time, particularly in relation to women’s daily lives. Despite a legacy of opinions to the contrary, WWHP views women’s work as inherently valuable, whether taking place in the formal structure of paid employment or the private realm of home and family. We seek to understand each woman’s work on her own terms in her own words.

Anne Marie Murphy

Owner, Eastern Scripts; Author, City of Corsets

I guess when you go to visit an historic site, you want to find out what happened. What happened here? Why is this place important? Why do a lot of people come here looking at this? And that's very similar to the book. I discovered that there were 130 corset businesses in the city over the course of 120 years or so. What happened here? Like, what caused that? Why were there so many? So it's when the questioning mind kicks in. How did this happen? What can I learn about it? What were their lives like? Those definitely relate to spending your childhood going to foreign countries and learning about new places. I think those tie together.

Anne Marie Murphy received her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Bowdoin College in 1982, started working several film industry positions, and did some freelance writing for local newspapers. Later Anne Marie went back to school to earn her degree in Critical Studies of Film and Television and started her own company called Eastern Script, the first script clearance house outside of Los Angeles county. Anne Marie came to the city of Worcester, and started volunteering at the Worcester Historical Museum Library.

Interviewer: 
Katie Ben
Tara O'Donnell
Interview Date: 
Fri, 03/17/2023
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Work
Name Sort: 
Murphy

Keri LeClair

Owner, Anchors Away Boat Detailing

We've started some of the processes to make that expansion out there. I don't know because I like how we're small; customers know us. They know who they're talking to. They know our faces.  I've gone to other marinas and in Boston everybody can now go to the other people's boats at the other marina. So, I'll be cleaning at one and I'll see some of my customers from Salem. I’ll be like, “Oh, hey, guys.” I appreciate that small—so I do want to expand to a point and I can do that any time really. And I've actually been contemplating if this year will be that. But I don't want to lose that small, one on one, just non-corporate feel. You know, it’s non-corporate. You know, I can show up with a messy bun. I always wear my Anchors Away shirt, but you know that they like that non robotic like they'll call me, “Hey, can I get you a coffee? But no, I already brought you one.” You know, it's like this. They like that. Just kind of like I'm a friend, you know, it's a friend business relationship type. It’s more personal.

Keri LeClair was born in Southbridge, Massachusetts, before moving to Worcester at a young age While no longer a permanent resident of the city, she often returns here to visit family and has a lot of insight into the area, having grown up there. Keri is an inspirational, self-made woman, who has compiled an extensive and impressive resume. Keri has worked in all types of fields, from finance to municipal administration, and she uses these experiences to run her own business—Anchors Away Boat Detailing—that she started post COVID. Keri is also an avid supporter and participant in the arts.

Interviewer: 
Emma Lockwood
Jasper Louden
Interview Date: 
Fri, 03/31/2023
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Work
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LeClair

Jozefina Lantz

Assists refugees and asylum seekers thru work with Lutheran Social Services, Friendly House, Clark University

I was griping one time at home to my husband. “I don't know why am I doing this? This is so frustrating.” And he's looking at me. He said, “Aren’t you thinking about your dad?” And it wasn't until that moment that I realized what effect that had actually on me. And yes, you are completely right. I think that was a big part of my desire to work with people who need assistance like that, that nobody's really looking after or helping. 

Jozefina Lantz was born in 1953 in Bar, Montenegro, but grew up in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She moved to Worcester in 1984 with her husband and infant daughter. Her son was born in Worcester. Jozefina worked in different social organizations, including as a manager for Friendly House Inc overseeing the operation of the homeless shelter and as the director of the Lutheran Social Services, where she was in charge of refugee resettlement.

Interviewer: 
Adam Liebel-McLean
Nicole Toedtli
Interview Date: 
Thu, 03/23/2023
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Work
Name Sort: 
Lantz

Mary Bloehm

President, B2B Holdings

From the beginning of my career to now, well, there's a lot more women in the workforce doing a lot more different things and varied things, and a lot of women starting all kinds of businesses, and even more so now, as well as women of color. Pride is a big topic now, and at the WBENC conference last week. There's an effort for Latinos, so that's good too.

Mary Bloem is a sixty-four-year-old woman who has lived and worked in Worcester County for many years of her life. She is the current President of B2B Holdings, a company that connects other organizations with manufacturers of office supplies and furniture, with customers locally, state, and nationwide. She has been working in corporate accounting since the eighties, and thus has an in-depth perspective on how corporate office culture has changed over the years.

Interviewer: 
Abigail St. Amand
Leah Smith
Yu Yunxiang
Interview Date: 
Wed, 03/29/2023
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Work
Name Sort: 
Bloehm

Nicole Bell

Founder and CEO, LIFT

I think about when I first got out, sitting in the jail cell, I never imagined I would be sitting here with you, holding my child, I never believed I would be allowed to be near my children.  I thought the best-case scenario I was going to get benefits and live out my life in a crappy rooming house.  I never believed I could do any of these things.  But also when we lean into people’s strengths and skill sets instead of their worthlessness I believe people can accomplish so much.  And I think of all the women around me who do this work every day, most of them began as participants or survivors in our programs, to now watch them really use their power...It’s really hard to undo all of the messaging of worthlessness and things like that that you’ve received your whole life.  But again, it’s leaning into your strengths and capabilities instead of that old story of incompetence and all you’ll ever be is a body for men to abuse.  That is not true and for me, I think there’s many paths to recovery, many paths to exiting prostitution.  My pathway out was social justice work and finding that I could make change for others and demonstrating that that is possible and true.

Nicole Bell was born in 1980 in Dorchester, MA.  She is the founder and CEO of LIFT [Living in Freedom Together] a nonprofit in Worcester, MA that runs several programs addressing the ending of prostitution and promoting recovery from trauma, substance use disorder, and mental health disorder. In this interview, Ms. Bell shares her own experiences with drug use disorder and her years as a prostituted woman which led to her finding her voice and becoming an outreach worker to other women.

Interviewer: 
Charlene L. Martin
Maureen Ryan Doyle
Interview Date: 
Mon, 11/21/2022
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Health
Work
Name Sort: 
Bell

Suzanne Simoncini

Special Projects Manager, Tegria Services Group

I was very fulfilled by the work I did as well as by my family life…I have a husband that was very much an equal partner. And I feel like that made a huge difference…We both have a strong Christian faith and having that as our foundation helped to give us strength and guidance along the way.

Suzanne Rice Simoncini was born in 1956 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Suzanne has resided in Worcester for the majority of her life. She grew up on Chandler Street in Worcester, and eventually moved to Park Avenue where she lived with her parents and siblings above the Rice Funeral Home which her father directed for many years. Suzanne graduated from Assumption College and began her career at UMass Medical Center. UMass opened many opportunities to Suzanne and led her to the career she presently enjoys.

Interviewer: 
Kaitlin O'Brien
Sydney Dickhaut
Interview Date: 
Mon, 03/14/2022
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Education
Work
Name Sort: 
Simoncini

Andrea Sullivan

Development Director, Jewish Community Center

I think one of the biggest things to share with young women is that it’s okay to change, to not doubt yourself all the time…Trust your gut. I found I had all these other strengths that I never knew. So, I think it’s more about realizing I’m more diverse in my abilities than I thought I was…I think every experience that you work through, you gain important values.

Andrea Sullivan was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, and grew up in Hopedale. From a young age, she helped in her family’s pizzeria, Arnold Pizza in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. She attended WPI [Worcester Polytechnic Institute] where she met her husband, Andy. She later worked for Genzyme [Genzyme Transgenics Corporation]. While working for  Genzyme, she pursued graduate studies at Worcester State University. She subsequently left the corporate world so she could spend more time raising her children and caring for her family.

Interviewer: 
Ava Onorato
Kathryn Tilak
Interview Date: 
Wed, 03/16/2022
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Work
Name Sort: 
Sullivan

Kim Miner

Executive Vice President/General Counsel, Worcester Red Sox

With the current ownership group when they bought the team in 2015, I think the team was exclusively white men on the staff across the board.  It has been what six or seven years since then? I think it has changed drastically. I actually think it’s changed a lot since we made the move to Worcester. We just have had better success finding a broader array of candidates. We have a lot of women, we have over time—and we are finally getting more racial diversity as well—diversity in other areas. It has been a priority. Brooke Cooper who your classmates talked to, is now the Senior Vice President and we now have two female VPs which is great. Since I came to the club, I was the only female VP until Brooke was made one. And I think it’s been good. You know there's always growing experiences and we have been trained well. I wanted to bring more women into the front office, it's a nice and fun environment with that. Not everyone is the same. Everyone has different backgrounds,everyone has different thoughts about baseball, how we should interact with the community and that makes it more interesting.

Kim Miner was born in 1989 in Boston, Massachusetts.  She was raised in Concord, Massachusetts. Kim is the daughter of Kathy and Bob Miner of Pennsylvania and has one younger sister. After attending Tufts University for a bachelors in economics, she took a gap year to work a few different minimum wage jobs to discover more of who she is. Kim married Adam Aronson in June 2017 and they now live in Quincy, Massachusetts. They do not have any kids but adopted a dog and cat recently. Kim went to law school at Harvard Law School and became a lawyer.

Interviewer: 
Kathleen Moran
Shea Ryan
Interview Date: 
Sun, 03/13/2022
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Work
Name Sort: 
Miner

Elizabeth Hamilton

Executive Director, Boys and Girls Club Worcester

I have to tell you, it's been an incredible honor, working at the Boys and Girls Club of Worcester, because I feel like this organization has done so much for so many years.  We are 133 years old so way before I was ever involved, it was doing great work and I believe it's continuing to do great work. And what I like about Boys and Girls Clubs in general is they meet the needs of the community they serve. So, there's I think 4000, over 4000 Boys and Girls Clubs in the US. If you've been to one Boys and Girls Club, you've only been to one Boys and Girls Club.  Every Boys and Girls Club is going be different. And I love that I feel like our clubs in Great Brook Valley, Palmer Village, and in the Main South area, truly represent our kids and our community. And I'm really proud of the incredibly talented and diverse team members that do so much incredible work with our kids and families. But I also want to acknowledge how great our kids are. Unlike regular childcare, our kids decide every day to walk here to get here. So, they're making really good choices and they're showing great leadership. And I'm proud of the work that they're doing. We're providing some resources and support but ultimately, it's up to the kids and it's always a real privilege to see them when they first start with us they’re age five and then graduate from high school and then go on to college and just see their transformation in their growth and everything that they've done for themselves. It's, it's amazing.

Elizabeth Hamilton was born in 1968 in Hackensack, New Jersey.  When she was the age of six, she moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma with her parents, brother and sister until the age of 18.  Elizabeth went to college at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, and then earned her master’s degree in social work at Boston University.  Between her undergraduate and graduate study, she served two years of Jesuit Volunteer Corps, one in Great Falls, Montana, and then another in Worcester, Massachusetts, which is how she became familiar with Worcester.  Elizabeth is married to Matthew and

Interviewer: 
Olivia Heaney
Sydney Morse
Interview Date: 
Wed, 02/23/2022
Interview Language: 
Interview Focus: 
Politics/Community Involvement
Work
Name Sort: 
Hamilton

Julieane Frost

Senior Marketing Manager, Worcester Art Museum

I have been very lucky that opportunities have presented themselves to me and I have taken them and that has kind of created my path. And it started when I was hired to be the Study Abroad Advisor and Assistant Director of International Programs at Clark University. And in part I was attracted to that job because I'm a first generation American, I had grandparents that lived in Germany, I had visited them. So I had some international experience. And I think I had an affinity for that experience of being new in a place. So, I was hired for that job, and I realized that what I liked the most about that was the communication part, the writing. So, I would write booklets for each of the different study abroad programs in each different country and the customs, what to expect, how to prepare yourself. And so then I left when I had my daughter. And then when she was a little bit older, I took a job at the Higgins Armory Museum. It started out as a staff writing position, and then it evolved into a public relations position. And so that is where I really learned that I love that, I love telling stories. And that's really what public relations is. It's telling stories, and trying to get those stories placed in various outlets so that there's a broad audience for that. That's really what it is.

In this interview conducted in partnership with the Worcester Women’s Oral History Project [WWOHP], we explore the many accomplishments of Julieane Frost. Born in Rutland, MA, in 1959, Julieane grew up enjoying the quiet comforts of a tight-knit neighborhood, including but not limited to the summertime activities offered at the town pool. She graduated from Wachusett High School and furthered her education at University of Massachusetts Amherst with a major in psychology before accepting a job at Brown University.

Interviewer: 
Kaleigh Brennan
Rosemary McLaughlin
Interview Date: 
Thu, 03/10/2022
Interview Focus: 
Education
Work
Name Sort: 
Frost

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