Clockwise from top left: Bartl, Berkelhammer, Dennison and Appelget.
Three Princeton women are among nine being honored by the YWCA Princeton at its annual Tribute to Women Award Dinner.
“The awards, which were established in 1984, recognize outstanding women achievers who have excelled in their professional careers, who live or work in greater Princeton or central New Jersey area and who have made extraordinary contributions to their professions and community in executive, entrepreneurial, professional, educational, and elected roles,” said a YWCA news release about the event, which takes place at the Hyatt Regency on March 6.
“Our 2014 Honorees have been selected because they walk the talk of our mission,” said Nancy Faherty, director of development for the YWCA Princeton.
“By paying tribute to their achievements, we collectively honor our history and embrace our future. We also affirm why we must remain fearless in our efforts to stop discrimination and allow women to prosper,” said Faherty.
Honorees at this years event include Princeton residents Joan Bartl, Sheila Berkelhammer, and Jane Dennison.
Bartl is owner and president of Payment Management Merchant Credit Card Processing Services, a local business. She is also a longtime advocate for women and children.
Berkelhammer is the past president of Princeton Community Housing (PCH), a private nonprofit that provides affordable housing for about 1,000 people in town.
Dennison is the recipient of the Waxwood Award — named for Susie Waxwood, the first African American executive director of the YWCA Princeton — is given in recognition of a lifetime of distinguished contributions to the YWCA Princeton.
Dennison became a YWCA participant when she attended summer camp in Central. Pa., at the age of nine. When she celebrates her 90th birthday this June, she will mark her 81st anniversary as a YWCA member.
Also among those being honored is Kristin Appelget, a Robbinsville resident who has held leadership positions at the Princeton Area Chamber of Commerce and Princeton University.
Bartl was inspired to begin advocacy work while she was browsing one of her children’s school readers. She said that in the reader she encountered “something really obnoxious like, ‘Girls are stupid, boys are smart, girls can’t do anything.’ It was terribly insulting.”
Aghast at the sexist attitudes that children were being exposed to in school, Bartl decided to take action. She brought the reader to a meeting of the National Organization of Women and read the offending passage aloud. Then, she asked if anyone wanted to help her research the topic of gender equality in children’s school materials.
Next, Bartl went to the Princeton school district and asked to borrow books to use as the basis for her research.
“The district was very helpful and gave us books to tally,” she said. Through their research, Bartl and her supporters discovered some alarming trends. For example, the books featured only one biography of a woman for every six biographies of a man, and while men were depicted in a variety of jobs from doctors and lawyers to repair men, women were only portrayed as secretaries, nurses, or, most often, not working at all.
These stereotypes did not match reality and did not provide a good example for young girls. Bartl published her findings in a report entitled Dick and Jane as Victims.
Although Bartl’s activism began after her children were in school, she started noticing issues of gender inequality in her own childhood. She was confused and appalled when her school teachers would say “Everyone should take his seat.” She said that when she was in school, “Boys got to do fun jobs and got attention, girls were quiet and unassuming, at least that was what was expected and anything out of the norm was punished and frowned upon.”
After publishing Dick and Jane as Victims, Bartl presented her findings to children’s school book publishers. She says that the publishers were actually very cooperative and receptive to her message. Sexism at the time was so pervasive that it had been included into the books unconsciously. However, once the overt sexism was pointed out to them, the publishers, who often had daughters being exposed to this material, were eager to make changes.
Bartl said that within 10 years she began to notice momentous changes in children’s school books. The narrow stereotypes were gone and the number of role models for girls increased. Also, by that time there was greater awareness of the feminist movement and laws like Title IX, the Federal regulation mandating that educational institutions cannot discriminate on the basis of sex, had gone into effect.
She says that today she sees “tremendous differences in what girls are able to achieve,” adding that now girls can raise their hands in class and actually be called on and participate in sports.
Today, Bartl is involved with a huge number of organizations including Womenspace, the Institute for Women in the Arts at Rutgers University, and the Public Banking Institute. She often chooses to work with organizations that address women’s and children’s issues.
She said that she is also very interested in economic justice and equality of opportunity, which affect everyone, particularly women and children, and says that it is her dream to bring public banks to more areas of the country.
Bartl said her drive for volunteer and advocacy work comes “out of my experience of success with children’s textbooks, career educational materials, and television shows. It has motivated me to do other things, to make a difference, spread the word, and put my feet where my mouth is.”
Bartl is determined to do whatever she can to speak up where issues of sexism and racism arise. In her acceptance speech at the Tribute to Women Awards Dinner, she will be speaking about giving voice to our commitments. “It’s fine to have commitments, but what are you doing about it?”
Berkelhammer first became involved with PCH in the late 1980s when she had an elderly relative who needed housing. Although this family member turned out not to be eligible to live in PCH facilities, Berkelhammer became very interested in the organization and joined the board. One of her greatest accomplishments as president of PCH, was breaking ground for the Harriet Bryan House, a housing facility for very low income seniors.
PCH was founded in 1967 when many groups around town, including Princeton University and various religious congregations, came together after the realization that not everybody who lived in Princeton was wealthy, and that it was necessary for many of Princeton’s less affluent residents to be able to afford housing in town.
PCH is currently the largest provider of affordable housing in Princeton.
“It’s been very exciting, because the state right now is kind of lagging, but Princeton has been really out there,” Berkelhammer said. “For a prestigious town, it’s got more affordable housing than many others in the state.” She is also proud of the diversity of the residents of PCH facilities. She said they are members of every race and creed and speak around 30 languages.
Berkelhammer has been involved in many different organizations over the years. “I like to be useful and I like to be helpful to people,” she said.
As the librarian at Hillsborough High School, she was a member of a professional organization that ran conferences to help school librarians keep up with changes in their field. She also served on the board of Greenwood House, an assisted living facility as Ewing, where she organized a library for the residents.
These days she is very active in Community Without Walls, an organization that exists “to help support each other as we age, to be useful and help people age in place as long as possible,” she said.
When she was active in the women’s division of the Jewish Federation, Berkelhammer and another woman founded a group called Primetime Women, which hosted a series of lectures for retired professional women.
“There wasn’t a lot of interest in women who have retired from various kinds of jobs going out to lunch and playing bridge,” Berkelhammer said.
However, there was a great deal of interest in lectures on topics like health, finances, family issues, world affairs, and politics, and the lecture series was very active and drew a large audience for about twelve years.
Berkelhammer said that she got her desire to serve others as a teenager when watching her mother help distant relatives who were Auschwitz survivors come to the United States. The relatives tracked Berkelhammer’s family down and asked for assistance.Before that, her mother hadn’t even known the relatives existed.
Nonetheless, “My mother worked tireless, she had to guarantee a home, jobs, and all kinds of things before these cousins could get visas and come,” she said.
Ultimately, her mother was successful in bringing four relatives to America. “It was an amazing accomplishment, I was just a kid at the time, watching [my mother’s] dedication really influenced me,” Berkelhammer said.
Although Appelget doesn’t live in Princeton, she has many ties to the community. She is the director of community and regional affairs at Princeton University, where she manages the relationship between the university and the surrounding communities. Prior to her job at the university, Appelget served for several years as the president and CEO of the Princeton Area Chamber of Commerce.
In her current job she works on issues such as transportation, sustainability, land use, planning, and zoning. Her job also involves bringing Princeton University together with the nearby communities and forging a stronger connection between them.
In fact, for much of her career, Appelget has done work that involves bringing different groups of people together to find common ground and build consensus.
“It may sound a little bit cliché,” she said, “but I enjoy working with people, enjoy working in a group dynamic, working together to find solutions to what may seem to be difficult problems, enjoy meeting people, enjoy learning more about individuals who have opinions different from mine.” She believes that the approach that she takes to her work results in a true spirit of cooperation and often results in better decision-making.
Appelget is also very passionate about serving her community. A native of central New Jersey, she was born and raised in West Windsor. After college, she returned home and got involved with local boards and committees, eventually being the youngest person ever elected to West Windsor Township Council. She considered her foray into politics as “a way to give back to the town that I grew up in.”
Appelget said she strongly values the idea of giving back. “I recognize a lot of people who came before me who provided me with th e wonderful opportunities I’ve had to be successful to the extent that I am. I believe wholeheartedly in the idea of paying it forward.”
Serving others and working to better her community have always been a part of Appelget’s life. She explains that as a child she watched her parents who were very involved in the community as local volunteers. “I think I learned from a young age from their example that you should volunteer time and talent to organizations in the community.”
One issue that Appelget focuses on is land use and guaranteeing open space. It’s something she fought for while sitting on the West Windsor Township Council and is also part of her current job at Princeton University. She also pursues her concern for the issue by sitting on the Robbinsville Township Zoning Board. Her enthusiasm for open space comes from growing up on a family farm. “That upbringing made me really learn to value the land,” she said.
Appelget is also passionate about providing resources and programming for women and children. She supports several local organizations involved in that type of work including the YWCA and the Lakeview Childcare Center Foundations. Her support takes on several forms such as sitting on boards, helping with programming, and philanthropy.
She said that she feels so strongly about these organizations because “I believe when you have strong and healthy families children flourish.”
She credits her awareness of these issues and the importance of supporting women and families to programs sponsored by the Princeton Area Community Foundation, particularly their Fund for Girls and Women.
For Appelget, supporting programming for children is another way of “paying it forward.” She was a very active athlete as a child through a number of local sports programs. Her involvement in sports taught her a number of very important lessons.
“Sports shaped who I am,” she said. “They gave me my first opportunity to be a leader, taught me to be a good teammate.” Therefore, she explains, she’s worked very hard as an adult to advocate for active sports programming, something she believes that adults need to provide for children in their communities.
Appelget takes the role of the YWCA’s mission of empowering women and eliminating racism very seriously. She uses it as a guiding principle in her personal life. She has four nieces under the age of four and a nephew who is seven.
“I feel like it’s my responsibility in being a good aunt to those five kids to be a good example to give them good examples how to be a tolerant person, and in the case of my nieces how to be strong, capable women,” Appelget said.
Other women being honored by the YWCA this year include Lawrence Township resident Barbara Flythe, a community volunteer and elder of Witherspoon Presbyterian Church; Ewing resident Danielle Gletow, founder of One Simple Wish and CNN Award Winner, Skillman resident Amy Rabner, a community leader and philanthropist; Lawrence Township resident Jigna Rao, a healthcare advocate, Rocky Hill resident Ann Reichelderfer, a shareholder at Stevens and Lee and Board member of the Princeton Area Community Foundation.
The women honored by the Tribute to Women are nominated by their peers and colleagues in an open nominations process. Following that, a selection committee reviews the nominees and chooses the winners based on diverse criteria including professional and academic achievement, leadership, and community service.
Although the YWCA Princeton’s Tribute to Women is a local event, it has counterparts across the country and all over the world. The YWCA has 25 million members worldwide and many chapters have similar events.
“This is a signature event promoting the mission of eliminating racism and empowering women as part of a global movement,” Faherty said.
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