Helen Forbes Fields Women of Achievement 2026 Remarks

HELEN FORBES FIELD
2026 WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT – MAY 28, 2026

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this celebration of our wonderful honorees and to bring light to the work of the YWCA of Greater Cleveland. 

First, I want to recognize the Board of Directors, and the staff of the YWCA. Your leadership, passion, and tireless work, make our mission a reality every single day. Please stand or wave so we can acknowledge you. 

Thank you to our Host Committee Co-Chairs, Board Members Susi Meisel and Sandra Madison, and to KeyBank, our Presenting sponsor, for your steadfast support of the YWCA and our mission.  Please stand so we can acknowledge you as well. 

The supporters you've just celebrated embody YWCA's values - action, leadership, and unwavering commitment to justice. They show us what is possible when we choose to see each other and build community across lines that otherwise might divide us. 

And we need them now more than ever. Because the ground beneath all of us is shifting. 

So tonight, I want to ground our discussion in the firmness of reality. Because understanding what's happening is the first step to standing for humanity and choosing differently. 

We are living through a moment of profound cultural anxiety, which is existential. The change occurring is affecting how we see each other, trust each other, and whether we believe in a shared future.  

Right now, the existence of organizations like the YWCA, where we are committed to everyone’s humanity, committed to eliminating racism, empowering women, and peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all, is being attacked and threatened, while we work to lift up a community when there are few others providing needed assistance.  

The work of actually serving and standing with women and communities of color is undervalued, maligned and significantly under resourced, by design. 

But here's what I know: when harmful actions are taken based only upon points of view instead of facts, we stay trapped in hyperbole and vicious cycles. So tonight, I want to ground our discussion in reality, in the actual numbers of what is really happening. 

In recent years, we have watched the racial wealth gap grow – not shrink – despite passing legislation such as the Civil Rights Act and decades of policies designed to create equity and promises that things would change. 

The median wealth of the average Black family is $44,100. The median wealth of the average Latino family is $62,120. And the median wealth of the average White family is $284,000. 

This gap has been widening for years. 

What's even more important to understand tonight, as we sit in a room full of women leaders – when we layer gender onto this picture, the injustice increases. 

For every one dollar of wealth owned by a never-married single White man, a Black woman owns eight cents. A Latina woman owns fourteen cents, and a White female owns seventy-eight cents on the dollar. 

And when we add the 300,000 Black women losing their jobs and careers in the public and private sectors over the past year, the wealth gap is even larger. 

This is the lived reality of some of the women we serve, and this is the lived reality of women sitting in this room who have fought their entire lives just to have a fraction of what their white male counterparts accumulate. 

And for the YWCA participants, many of whom are seeking shelter with us when losing homes or desiring to educate preschoolers while living in shelter, or young adults seeking a home when aging out of foster care, their lived reality can be unbearable.  

For instance, we serve many participants suffering from mental illness. We see those who receive treatment and those who do not. About half of White adults receive treatment when needed for mental illness. For Black and Latina adults, it is closer to 1/3. And Black women are far less likely even to be screened or treated for things like post partum depression. 

Women make up about 40% of people residing in shelters.  Black Americans make up more than 30% of the homeless population, and in Cuyahoga County, the percentages of Black women, provided shelter at Norma Herr, was 62% in 2025. 

For women, homelessness is rarely about one bad choice. It is often about domestic violence or trauma, mental illness or addiction, or a sudden economic shock like job loss or illness. 

And lastly, for women who are homeless, their life span is literally cut in half.  Studies show homeless women, often die about 20 years earlier than women with stable housing. 

And, the safety net of food, shelter, medical care is being dismantled as I speak. 

Trillions of dollars, and limitations to services, have been stripped from Medicaid, SNAP, and housing assistance over the past year and a half. And further cuts in Ohio are anticipated. 

What we need right now is true empathy. We need the willingness to actually see what's happening to women and children, and in particular to women and children of color. And to ask ourselves: what am I willing to do about it? Where do I stand? 

Nationally, one in three nonprofits reported government funding disruptions in the first months of 2025 alone. In Ohio, 72% of nonprofits would be in the red without government funding. Ohio ranks 12th among states with the highest share of at-risk nonprofits. Nonprofits across our state received $8 billion in government grants. Nearly one in three dollars of our local GDP flows through the non-profit economy. That money is now at risk. 

This is not an abstraction. This represents organizations like ours. This is the YWCA. Where we serve those who deserve peace, justice, freedom, and dignity. 

This is the crisis of service. But this is also the moment which demands more than awareness. It demands action.

The YWCA is already doing that work. We are showing up. We are choosing to see each other and stand together despite the odds and the withering storm – to serve when all seems impossible. 

But we can't do it alone, and we can’t solve what we refuse to see. Tonight, we are hearing the facts together, and from this moment forward, we can choose to stand for women and children. 

True stewardship is not about influence or rhetoric. It is about the responsibility we carry on behalf of our communities, and the generations yet to come. It is about looking at this moment, this crisis of service, and saying: I choose differently. I choose to see. I choose to act. I choose to stand with community.

This is the work of the YWCA. This is the choice we make every single day. And this is the choice we're asking you to make. 

Tonight, we are surrounded by women who have already made that choice. Women who embody what it means to redefine and change community. Women who have looked at a fractured world and said: I'm going to act. I'm going to see beyond my own circle. I'm going to be part of the solution. 

These are our Women of Achievement. 

Tonight, we celebrate them. Not only for their accomplishments, but for what they represent in this moment of crisis and choice. 

They are proof that redefining community is possible. That choosing shared humanity is possible.  

Because of you, our community is stronger, more inclusive, and more just. Your legacy is written in the lives you have touched and the change you have sparked. You are not standing on the sidelines. You are implementing ideas. You are making progress. You are making sure change happens. 

Thank you to tonight's honorees. You remind us that leadership is not about titles. It is about impact. It is about standing up to see each other and choosing to make change. 

That is the YWCA. That is what we do. And that is what we need from all of us. Right now. 

Thank you.