No Balloons, Just Belonging: Creating the Room You've Always Wanted to Sit In

“What did you expect — balloons and a welcoming committee?”

This is an example of a rhetorical question, and I once had a leader who actually asked me this as I returned to work from being out on FMLA. 

I was a single mom of three young boys; I had been home for several weeks on leave, hospitalized with an aggressive MS relapse. I was excited to be back at work, and I was thrilled to see my students again after weeks away, 

I did not want a welcoming committee; I wanted to feel welcome.

Not all rooms we enter foster opportunities, so when I was asked to start the U.S. Hub of Women in Change last fall, I knew that was my primary goal– connection, belonging, access, and championing other women. 

So yesterday, I created the room I have always wanted to sit in.

During lunch, I took a moment and looked around. Four generations of leaders gathered around an oversized boardroom table. The converted fire station was raw, real, repurposed—much like many of us as we shared our often non-linear professional and personal paths. 

There we gathered: Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z together to discuss women leading change. 

One woman shared that she opened a flower shop with her daughter who named it JoyBlooms because, as she said beaming, “we all deserve joy.” Another shared that she was one of three women in her engineering program in college. Our youngest attendant shared that she is the first person in her family to go to college. The stories varied, but we shared one commonality: we all broke our own barriers.

As our keynote spoke about her mother, Penny Chenery, I stopped, took a deep breath and looked around. These women—doctors, real estate brokers, teachers, students, coaches, academic advisors, data scientists, non-profit workers, psychologists, podcasters—also shared something in common: they also chose to sit in this room.

In this room, we listened to an inspirational opening message from Lori Waran, NASCAR Richmond Raceway’s first female president. Unlike many sports, when a professional driver looks to the left and looks to the right–they will see both women and men driving the same track, Waran shared. 

However, this is not always the messaging young women receive. As many of us know, the playing field is not always even. 

In fact, girls start second-guessing themselves starting at the young age of seven, Waran shared. Not because it is true, “but because it is reinforced.” She went on to say that “boys are three times more likely to be given a science-related toy.” Parents are also “twice as likely to Google ‘is my son gifted’ than ‘is my daughter gifted.’” 

Waran also explained the role of a restrictor plate in racing– it is designed to limit speed. Waran encouraged us, “Don’t let anything or anyone become your restrictor plate.”

It is essential that young women see themselves in leaders like Waran. We are also indebted to trailblazers like Penny Chenery, who pushed societal norms. In her keynote, her daughter, Kate Chenery Tweedy, humanized her iconic mother and her journey as the first woman to win the Triple Crown (the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes in 1973). 

Tweedy reminded us through her mother’s narrative that living our purpose is essential. Only we can write our true story.

As we packed up the room and walked—together—to the statue of Secretariat that Tweedy helped bring to the small town of Ashland, Virginia to commemorate her family’s legacy, I was honored to walk the few blocks with her. I shared how thrilled I was to hear her mom’s remarkable story. She said, “I often get asked to talk about the horse, and it was so nice to talk about mother.”

Yesterday’s Long Lunch made me realize that not every room is going to have balloons and a welcoming committee, but the women gathered at the DEIC brought that and so much more. 

After years of being in the rooms that can keep you small, it feels amazing to be surrounded by women leading change. They shed their own restrictor plates, so others can do the same.