Since 2015, the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women has been celebrating women at CWRU and beyond with the Annual Women of Achievement & Spotlight Awards. The prizes are partially funded through the Mather Spotlight Series Endowment, established in 1989 by the Mather Centennial Celebration Committee of the Flora Stone Mather Alumnae Association.
In 2024, the awards were rebranded. The awards are now called The Floras, to more closely align with the Mather Center’s 20th Anniversary awards and to create more opportunity to recognize change makers both in the CWRU community and the Greater Cleveland Area.
The Flora Awards honor the philanthropic spirit and community service of Flora Stone Mather. This award recognizes women who, like Flora Stone Mather, address problems in their community and work innovatively and tirelessly to solve them through significant philanthropic and communal service and other acts of generosity. Flora’s work centered on supporting the physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual needs of women and children.
There are seven categories for nomination: faculty, staff, graduate student, undergraduate student, alumna, community leader and Notable Woman of the Year.
Learn more about the 2024 honorees below.
Undergraduate Awardee: Sudi Harbool
Sudi Harbool is a sophomore, double-majoring in biology and psychology, and minoring in French, social justice and chemistry. Outside of her academic work, Harbool volunteers for the Salam Clinic, is also president of the CWRU Human Rights Initiative and of Crossroads of Healthcare. She is a remarkable advocate for the advancement of women’s health, education, empowerment and success.
Harbool was nominated by Shoaib Shah, CEO of Salaam Clinic, where Harbool is a volunteer medical assistant. At the clinic, Harbool leveraged her French skills to help support French-speaking African women who are patients. Demonstrating her dedication, she decided to pursue minors in social justice and French after her experiences with the clinic.
Each week, Harbool visits six women in varying stages of cognitive decline as a hospice volunteer.
As president of the CWRU Human Rights Initiative, Harbool created opportunities for undergraduates to serve as scribes and affidavit writers for individuals seeking asylum in the U.S. Additionally, as president of Crossroads of Healthcare, she leads efforts to tackle community healthcare challenges by planning to write letters to policymakers that highlight issues disproportionately affecting women and marginalized groups.
Funded by a SOURCE STEM summer research award, Harbool also has conducted research on preterm birth. She also has researched racial disparities among pancreatic cancer patients.
Graduate Awardee: Anvitha Ravipati
Anvitha Ravipati is a doctoral candidate in sociology. Ravipati previously was selected as a Freedman Student Fellow through the Kelvin Smith Library and is currently a graduate research assistant with the Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health.
Ravipati was nominated twice: by Micah Arafah, who has collaborated with Ravipati on numerous research projects, and by Linea Webb, Ravipati’s supervisor.
Ravipati’s commitment to advocating for women’s education and leadership is evident through her academic and community-oriented work. Her dissertation, titled “Feminist Empowerment among Women Farmers in Communities Undergoing Agroecological Transition: A Cross-Cultural Study,” focuses on the empowerment of women farmers, particularly in agroecological transitions, a field that Ravipati is deeply invested in academically and practically. Her research investigates how small-scale farms operated by women benefit from agroecological practices compared to conventional farming, emphasizing leadership, decision-making and community engagement.
Ravipati’s cross-cultural work spans Cleveland and rural India, where she highlights the critical role of women in sustainable agricultural transitions. Focusing on women in agroecology, she explores how their knowledge and leadership contribute to community well-being and the development and maintenance of ecologically sustaining farming practices. Her work in Cleveland has centered on understanding the challenges faced by Black and Hispanic women farmers in small-scale community gardens through fieldwork, interviews and volunteer work, which also helps to foster a broader understanding of their vital role in local food systems.
In her free time Ravipati attends community events at urban farms led by women. She is intentional about being inclusive and recognizing intersectionality throughout her work, and has actively participated in Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health’s community engaged research focused on food system inequities, race, and power.
Staff Awardee: Arlet Wright
Arlet Wright is the senior associate dean of student affairs and the special assistant to the vice president of student affairs. She has provided more than 35 years of service to CWRU, with accomplishments including reinvigorating Thwing Center and Eldred Hall. Her presence is felt deeply on campus through her dedication to her colleagues across the Division of Student Affairs and beyond.
Wright was nominated by two of her colleagues in the Dean of Student’s Office: Allison Gillis and Greg Harris.
After starting as a temporary employee at CWRU, Wright worked her way up the organizational ladder. Throughout her journey, she has helped pull women with her so they too could climb the university ladder. She freely gives her time, energy, and life experiences to help guide others so they too can thrive at the university.
Wright’s mentorship to colleagues is vital, and she provides a space for people to feel seen and heard. She is committed to educating her colleagues from a historical perspective as well with the intent and purpose of continuous improvement and advancement of opportunities for women.
Wright’s commitment to diversity and inclusion can be physically seen in Eldred Hall, which was re-opened in September 2023 as a result of her advocacy, leadership, vision and hard work. She worked collaboratively with others across campus, uplifted student voices and transformed this space intentionally to welcome and represent all students. Wright also supports students from various socioeconomic statuses and willingly gives her time to volunteering at the CWRU Community Pantry. She jumps right on board with any initiative the pantry is doing and uses her leadership and voice to leverage it.
Wright also won the President’s Award for Distinguished Service in 2022
Faculty Awardee: Danielle Czarnecki
Danielle Czarnecki is a visiting assistant professor in the sociology department. After completing her PhD in 2017, she worked as postdoctoral fellow first at McGill University and then at the University of Cincinnati as part of the Ohio Policy Evaluation Network, which does a great deal of work in support of reproductive rights.
Since joining the CWRU faculty, she has continued to work on reproductive rights, including teaching a course on the topic to CWRU students.
Her research focuses on issues related to gender, technology and reproduction. Her current research examines people’s moral lives in the context of their experiences with contested medical technologies and procedures. She has studied Christian women’s experiences with infertility and assisted reproductive technologies, how healthcare providers make decisions about participation in abortion care, women’s experiences with genetic carrier testing in reproductive healthcare settings, and how policy restrictions on reproductive health care impact patients and clinicians. Her work has been published in Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Gender & Society, Qualitative Sociology, Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, and Contraception.
Czarnecki was nominated by Kate Freeman, a graduate assistant in the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women and a student in one of Czarnecki’s classes.
Community Awardee: Teleangé Thomas
Teleangé Thomas is the founder of Plattforms LLC, a women- and minority-owned firm that specializes in the design, startup and sustainability of social change initiatives to improve humanity through socio-economic opportunity and equity-based solutions, elevating people, places and ideas. Though she was nominated for the Community Award due to the work she’s doing in Cleveland, she also is a Case Western Reserve University alum.
Thomas has a wealth of experience in public health, nonprofit management, philanthropy and community and economic development. Until recently, she was the chief operating and relationship officer for JumpStart Inc., where she was responsible for aligning the talent, infrastructure, and resources of the organization to unlock the power of entrepreneurship to transform communities. She set strategy for JumpStart’s long-term sustainability, strengthened partnerships and spearheaded the organization’s involvement in civic initiatives, including the Cleveland Innovation Project, the MidTown Innovation District and other initiatives aligned to JumpStart’s goals and values to drive equitable economic impact.
Prior to joining JumpStart, she served as the director of partnerships at Candid. Before her tenure at Candid, Thomas served in leadership and management positions at The Sisters of Charity Foundation, University Hospitals and the City of Cleveland.
Thomas also is a co-founder of the Cleveland Black Equity & Humanity Fund, along with Cecil Lipscomb, Constance Hill-Johnson and Kevin Johnson. The Cleveland Black Equity and Humanity Fund is one of a number of sustainable outcomes resulting from the 2019 Soul of Philanthropy Cleveland exhibition. The vision is a sustainable fund, seeded by African-Americans and community allies that can support and facilitate philanthropic investment in causes and issues that promote and support Black-led social and economic change throughout Northeast Ohio.
Thomas was nominated by Natalie Jemiola, the operations manager in the Mather Center and a former colleague of Thomas.
Alumna award: Halle Tecco
Halle Tecco (MGT ’06) is a healthcare entrepreneur who has founded multiple companies, including endeavors with a specific focus on women’s health and fertility. She also works as an adjunct faculty member at Columbia Business School, teaching MBA students about digital healthcare. She has been widely recognized for her professional and personal achievements, including as one of Forbes’s “30 under 30” in 2013.
Tecco was nominated by Micheal Goldberg, the inaugural executive director and associate vice president of the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship.
Tecco’s foundational career steps at Intel and Apple equipped her with critical expertise that fueled her subsequent entrepreneurial ventures. After earning her MBA from Harvard in 2011 and a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins in 2013, she founded Rock Health in 2010. As the first venture fund dedicated to digital health, Rock Health raised more than $50 million and supported more than 100 companies that revolutionized healthcare access and efficiency.
In 2019, Tecco launched Natalist, a consumer health company that focuses on scientifically backed fertility and pregnancy products, now available at Target among other places to enhance accessibility. That same year, she co-founded Cofertility, a revolutionary service that integrates egg freezing with egg donation, benefiting thousands of women.
At Columbia Business School, Tecco introduced the first MBA-level course on digital health investing. She also hosts “The Heart of Healthcare” podcast, engaging with key figures to foster critical discussions and advocate for universal healthcare access. This podcast, recognized as the No. 1 podcast in the Top 100 Health Tech All-Time charts, illustrates Tecco’s dedication to using her platform to improve healthcare for all.
Tecco’s engagement with academia extends to her alma mater as well; she was a featured speaker in the CWRU Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship Speakers Series in 2020..
2024 Notable Woman of the Year
Biannually, the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women honors a Notable Woman of the Year. The center selects a woman who has dedicated their time and energy—over the course of their career—to creating a more equitable world. This year, the Mather Center honored Shelly McNamara.
McNamara is a dynamic, transformational executive leader with deep expertise and experience driving sustainable and meaningful organization change, most recently as the chief equality and inclusion officer of global consumer package goods powerhouse Procter & Gamble. McNamara recently retired from P&G after more than 37 years leading across a range of executive roles, including senior HR vice president of beauty care, health care, and corporate functions, before her five years as chief equality and inclusion officer.
She has experience across the full range of HR work with specific focus and accomplishment in the areas of human-centered organization development, change management, and executive coaching. While at P&G, Shelly partnered with two P&G CEOs and various leadership teams around the world to build organization strategy and action plans that resulted in positive business outcomes through strong, diverse teams.
As P&G’s chief equality and inclusion officer, McNamara was responsible for shaping culture, policies and leadership to build a talent pipeline and culture that has enabled P&G and its brands to better serve their diverse and global employee and consumer base. Rooted in a deep understanding of the nuance and complexity of change and human behavior, McNamara artfully architects systems, culture, leadership and capability to ensure the growth of organization, culture and employees to drive short- and long-term impact.
Born in Cleveland as the youngest of 15 children, McNamara is an accomplished writer, storyteller, speaker and advisor. As the most senior and visible member of the LGBTQ community at P&G, McNamara worked with many colleagues to make meaningful policy and culture changes for this and other employee groups to expand access, opportunity and the experience of inclusion for all employees. She has coached and inspired numerous HR leaders across Fortune (500) companies and serves on the executive committee of The Trevor Project.
