Women’s Fund Founders and Executive Directors

In 1990, long-time Omaha volunteer Gail Walling Yanney was contacted by Earl Taylor, executive director of the Omaha Community Foundation. There was a need for a Women’s Fund in the community and Gail was asked to spearhead the effort. Shortly after, the Omaha Community Foundation applied for a Ford/MacArthur Foundation grant. The Foundation was awarded $150,000 over three years and encouraged to develop a Women’s Fund.

Early in 1991, Mary Heng-Braun was hired to staff the Women’s Fund as the first executive director, and the group began organizing in earnest. One of the fundamental elements of the Women’s Fund was research with work focused on addressing issues such as domestic violence, leadership and pay equity.

The founders could have pursued any number of critical issues impacting women and girls in the community, but one rose to the top for Mary because of its urgent nature. “Violence against women is a life and death issue,” she said in a 2016 issue of Today’s Omaha Woman magazine. “Literally, for these women—if left alone it was a case of life and death.”

While the public had previously thought violence against women was a problem best kept behind closed doors, Mary laid a foundation of increasing knowledge about domestic violence and how communities can respond. This included publishing research, “Can We Stop the Violence?”, which laid the groundwork for the Domestic Violence Coordinating Council.

In 1992, the Women’s Fund conducted its fundraising campaign, guided by chairs Pat Lamberty and John Gottschalk. The board of directors, which included many members of the original 1990 brainstorming group, now organized the grant-making process and began to set yearly targets for grant-giving. In 1993, the board continued its thoughtful process of how to best serve women in the community and designed criteria for community-initiated grants. The need for quality child care was identified as a major issue and the Women’s Fund created the Outstanding Child Care Provider Awards, which continued for the next five years.

Under the focus area of leadership, the Women’s Fund produced a research report, “Women & Leadership” in 1996 (that was then updated every five years after ending in 2016). The Leadership Talent Bank was then created in 1995 as a database of female candidates for area board positions.

During Mary’s tenure and along with board member Dianne Seeman Lozier in 1996, the Women’s Fund started publishing a magazine, Today’s Omaha Woman. The first and only editor continues to be Melanie Morrissey Clark, as the publication serves as the voice for the organization.

The Women’s Fund became an independent charitable organization in 2001 and hired its next executive director, Ellie Archer.

Ellie started the organization’s work on tackling STDs in Omaha. “I got a call from Mary Heng-Braun. She really put it on my radar that this was an issue where we had epidemic levels of STDs in our community.” Although a delicate subject, Ellie knew the first step in taking action was to start the conversation. And this would not be just a conversation—STDs were a topic many weren’t ready to talk about or willing to address.

“It was certainly a worthy issue to take on and [I knew] that it would be a controversial one,” Ellie said in a 2016 issue of Today’s Omaha Woman magazine. “Well, I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge, so we dove in. We had a very small staff—less than two full-time equivalent people. So we worked really hard, on a shoe-string budget.”

Early in the process, with Ellie’s leadership, the Women’s Fund created a community survey for area nonprofits asking which they considered the top three critical issues that impacted women and girls most. Each time the survey was conducted, the same three issues became apparent: teen pregnancy, self-esteem and lack of sexual literacy.

With that information, Ellie and the team started giving grants to address the problem. Some grants helped to fund STD testing and further sexual health education. The Women’s Fund also launched efforts to get the conversation started in the community. One early grassroots effort was promoting and funding the distribution of condoms in bars on St. Patrick’s Day.

Young women were predominately impacted by STDs. To reach this audience, the Women’s Fund developed print ad campaigns and contacted local school newspapers and journalism teachers in Omaha. The “Get Tested” message also ran on area billboards.

Outside of this sexual literacy work, Ellie oversaw increased grant giving to include pledges to the Latina Resource Center and the formation of the first giving circle. The Women’s Fund began training candidates to run for office through Ready to Run Candidate school;  connected volunteers with nonprofit leadership opportunities through Ready2ServeOmaha website, launched with the Greater Omaha Chamber Young Professionals; and trained hundreds through the Ready To Serve board training to foster women’s leadership.

By 2010, the Women’s Fund had exceeded $2.5 million in community grants awarded. And in 2011, Circles was launched to introduce young women leaders to the organization and provide opportunities for networking. The next year, 25 local leaders would become part of the inaugural class of Women’s Fund Circles. And it was in 2012 that Ellie retired after 11 years as executive director.

When Michelle Zych was hired as executive director in 2013, the organization was awarding around $134,000 in grants annually, focusing the areas of domestic violence, economic self-sufficiency, leadership development and sexual literacy. Eight years later, when Michelle left to take a position with The Sherwood Foundation, the Women’s Fund awarded grants totaling more than $10 million.

Cited as a brilliant, strong leader, the Women’s Fund stepped into its boldness under the direction of Michelle. “She doesn’t back down when she knows something is right. She was ready and the organization was ready to take it to the next level,” former board chair Melanie Morrissey Clark said in a 2016 issue of Today’s Omaha Magazine. “She has a solid understanding of and passion for the issues we are addressing, and has hired a driven, talented team. The funding is there and people believe in what we’re doing.”

In January 2014, the Women’s Fund along with The Sherwood Foundation took to STD work started under Ellie Archer to another level with the formation of the Adolescent Health Project (AHP). Research identified a major gap was the need for comprehensive sex education in schools. AHP focused on four priority areas—implement new school-based sex education; expand capacity of free STD testing and treatment, and condom distribution; raise awareness through media campaigns; and increase access to free birth control. By May 2016, the first priority of AHP was reached with the successful passage of a new comprehensive human growth and development curriculum within Omaha Public Schools.

Building on the foundational work by the fund’s original founders, the Women’s Fund took a new step to further improve the ways in which our community addresses domestic violence and sexual assault. In September 2016, the Women’s Fund and Domestic Violence Council (DVC) merged efforts to continue the organizations strong efforts to create communities free from gender-based violence.

During Michelle’s tenure, the Women’s Fund released nine major research reports on topics such as human trafficking, the Cliff Effect, leadership and domestic violence. She also led the Women’s Fund to embrace efforts to better advocate for effective public policies in the areas of payday lending reform, paid family leave and equal pay. Under her leadership, the organization took stands against white supremacy, advocated for comprehensive sex education in schools, formatted organizational values, and became the fiscal sponsor for I Be Black Girl.

All these things are remarkable accomplishments for any executive director but consider the fact that Michelle was just 29 years old when she took the position. Her courage and vision led the Women’s Fund into a new era of gender equity work.

When asked what she was most proud of from her time at the Women’s Fund, she responded, “I’m most proud of the team that we built at the women’s Fund. Brilliant and bold professionals who took our work to improve the lives of all women and girls seriously while finding joy and caring for and about each other. This foundation made it possible for us to increase the level of grant funding, convene partners for tough conversations, and center the lived experiences of women and girls as we resourced solutions to complex issues.”

Jo Giles has been the executive director of the Women’s Fund since May 2021. During this time, she has led with curiosity, compassion and courage, stepping to the frontlines of addressing gender and racial inequities in our community. Jo’s passion and determination—and past experiences in communications strategy, public policy leadership and nonprofit experience—continue to position her uniquely to lead this organization in addressing the most critical challenges facing anyone who experiences gender-based oppression.

Jo has built up the staff to include 12 full-time members as well as our diverse board of directors plus more than 90 Circles members. She has promoted several staff members in recent years, including elevating our Weitz Fellow to a full-time, Youth Engagement and Social Media Coordinator; hiring our organization’s first ever Development Manager and Deputy Director to expand our organizations fundraising capacity and strategic work in the community; and continues to review internal policies centering equity allowing all staff to thrive at work and in their personal lives.

Since Jo’s tenure, our policy advocacy efforts have only grown bolder thanks to her vision in meeting the moment and pushing forward unapologetically. During the 2022 Legislative Session, the Women’s Fund team provided testimony on 30 bills—successfully passing two priority bills supporting survivors of sexual violence with unanimous support from state lawmakers. Of the seven bills opposed, none of them became law in 2022. That’s a 100% success rate on stopping policies that would negatively impact gender equity, including three attempts to ban or unnecessary restrict abortion care. During the 2023 and 2024 legislative sessions, Jo supported Women’s Fund efforts to advocate for 62 bills of which 24 passed and were put into law—including key legislation to support survivors including updating the Sexual Assault Survivors Bill of Rights and clarifying domestic abuse protection orders to include household pets, removing a barrier to survivors seeking safety.

After more than a decade of roadblocks in passing paid leave at the legislative level, Jo served as one of the ballot sponsors for the Paid Sick Leave for Nebraskans initiative, ensuring that all workers in our state would have the ability to earn and use paid sick leave when they need to – to be able to care for themselves or a family member, for safe leave when navigating abusive relationships or to simply take time off work for preventative medical appointments. The ballot measure passed with an overwhelming majority support from 75% of Nebraska voters in November 2024.

Additional highlights include: the launch of sexual health vending machines; expanded flexible funding for Freedom From Violence grantees; centering equity in our internal organizational policies; developing a strategic framework in response to the gender equity movement, and continuing our strong tradition of featuring amazing speakers at our annual Lead the Change event (including ‘me too.’ Movement Leader Tarana Burke, Civil Rights Advocate Anita Hill Academy Award-Winning Actor Geena Davis and Head Women’s Basketball Coach Dawn Staley).

As the Women’s Fund works to advance bold, community-drive actions, Jo is focused on working strategically, staying in community with others and being unapologetic in pushing the work forward to the benefit of entire communities.