Choose to Challenge...

Today marks International Women’s Day, whose theme for 2021 is “Choose to Challenge”, a nod to the increasingly challenged world we all find ourselves in:

A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we're all responsible for our own thoughts and actions - all day, every day. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women's achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world. From challenge comes change, so let's all choose to challenge.

– International Woman’s Day 2021 Theme

While this theme resonates with so many of the world’s female leaders, it particularly reminds me of the legendary Shirley Chisholm. Chisholm is remembered as an American politician – the first black woman elected to U.S. Congress. But she was a revolutionary, a feminist, an equal rights activist, and the definition of a trailblazer.

Born in the home of our NY office – Brooklyn – Chisholm’s parents were immigrants, and she spent much of her childhood and early education years in Barbados with her grandmother. Upon returning to her home of Bed-Stuy, she attended an integrated school, and then went on to Brooklyn College, where her debate skills and activism were sharpened. She was surrounded by politics within her family, her environment, and her school.

When she graduated college, she worked as a teacher’s aide, taught nursery school, eventually becoming the director of a nursery and an education consultant. After a few forays into politics, she ran for New York state assembly in 1964 and won by a landslide, by appealing to and mobilizing female voters. Just four years later, she ran a historic campaign with a huge upset with her campaign “unbought and unbossed,” and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She went on to break new ground everywhere she stepped – she hired an all-female staff, she was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and she played a critical role in the creation of the WIC program.

And then, in 1972, Chisholm became the first African-American candidate for a major party’s nomination for President. She became the first woman to run for the Democratic Party nomination. It stuns me that it is close to 50 years later, and we are only now seeing a woman Vice-President in this country.

I want history to remember me... not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself. I want to be remembered as a catalyst for change in America.

Chisholm embodied the choose to challenge theme completely. Her entire life’s work was a choice to challenge this country’s narrative – a choice to call out the inequalities she saw and create a world in which she could be President. She challenged the status quo and paved the way for us all to live in a more fair, more just world. And so, today, we salute her.

-Reshma