On March 7, 2024, women groundbreakers, who work locally and globally to serve diverse communities in their respective fields gathered in Chattanooga, Tennessee to share their stories with Deborah Levine, CEO of the American Diversity Report. The women groundbreakers were:
- LuLu Copeland – Director: Economic & Workforce Development Administration /Chattanooga State Community College, Exec. Director at TN-China Network,
- Dr. Gail Dawson – Associate Prof. of Management and Director of Diversity & Inclusion at the Rollins College of Business /U. of TN/ Chattanooga,
- Vanessa Jackson – Program Specialist with the City of Chattanooga’s Office of Multicultural Affairs and one of Chattanooga’s first Neighborhood Relations Specialists,
- Teletha McJunkin – For the past 8 years, she has led and coordinated international, multicultural, multi-lingual teams developing strategies in the areas of human and environmental rights.
Their stories were inspirational. The moniker of groundbreakers is apropos because their journeys were not a straight line, but “a long and winding road.” They broke ground by widening their own horizons and paving the way for others both like themselves and different from themselves along various diversity dimensions.
LuLu Copeland grew up in Taiwan and lived in the Philippines before going to high school in Tennessee. She spent time in New York and returned to Tennessee. And Chattanooga has been her home for 40 years. Copeland earned her BS and MS in engineering from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). She pursued a career in STEM before there was a push for women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.
Initially, Copeland pursued a career in architecture and even worked as a mechanical engineer for TVA and Olan Mills, where she was on the mommy track. However, she believes her career took off when she joined Chattanooga State and taught AutoCAD and workforce development for companies, such as, DuPont, Volkswagen, and Lazy Boy. She worked with and taught a more diverse community from the local region and internationally. She provided access to technical education that had not been readily available. First through UTC Tech and bridging a relationship with Dayton and Brian College.
Now, Copeland serves as an advisor to college engineering programs. She helped established a student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE); and the executive director of the Tennessee China Network. The latter sometimes draws attention from the FBI. But Copeland thinks it is worth the scrutiny to advance women in STEM.
Dr. Gail Dawson was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and earned her BS degree from Florida A&M University, one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). She then worked for General Motors in Flint Michigan and Fort Wayne Indiana until she went back to school to earn her MBA at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business. She had intended to return to General Motors and remedy problems she observed in management. Instead, her career took a turn, and she became a Management Consultant for Price Waterhouse in their Office of Government Services.
While working for Price Waterhouse, she was recruited into KPMG’s Ph.D. project. KPMG was targeting businesspeople from underrepresented marginalized groups to earn a doctorate and to teach business, in order to create a more diverse workforce. She earned her PhD in Business Administration at the University of Florida. She has taught graduate and undergraduate classes in human resource management, diversity, and organizational behavior at UTC for the past 24 years.
Interesting, many of Dr. Dawson’s students are not people of color and they have had little exposure to diverse communities. Part of the course training she provides is for her students to connect with communities different from their own—to go to predominantly Latino or Black churches and get to know people as people. They have to reflect on their experiences and write a report. Dr. Dawson believes that this will assist them in working with and leading employees from diverse environments. Essentially, she has allowed her students to experience breaking down stereotypes by exposing them to individuals that do not fit the stereotypes. Allowing her students to get to know the individual, which should make them a better and more empathetic leader.
Vanessa Jackson has a bachelor’s degree in political science and culture studies from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) and an MPA from UTC. She is one of Chattanooga’s first three women Neighborhood Relations Specialist. Jackson helped to remove barriers of discrimination for small businesses and make policies and practices fair for urban and rural diversity. She was intentional and strategic.
Jackson grew-up in a Black community and went to a predominantly Black high school. Initially, she intended to attend an HBCU, but after going to a world fair, she chose UTK to experience a more ethnically, socioeconomically, culturally, and internationally diverse experience. It functioned as the foundation for her professional career. Her first job was as an eligibility counselor for the State of Tennessee. She met diverse women and men from various countries and counties seeking services and resources to help support their families. Jackson found it to be an eye-opening experience. She saw that people in need crossed racial, ethnic, and national lines. She loved that job and even worked as a probation officer providing a road to self-worth and redemption to those who had made mistakes in our society and who wished to set their life on a better course.
Ultimately, Jackson career led her to be the Program Specialist with the City of Chattanooga’s Office of Multicultural Affairs. The program that gives her the most pride is the internship program that gives diverse college students the opportunity to see government in action and observe how the Office of Multicultural Affairs’ minority business programs mitigate barriers that could impede the start of a small business. The students leave with an understanding that small businesses are the backbone of our society, and it is a route to upward mobility and that government has a responsibility to remove barriers of discrimination by eliminating bias institutional practices and policies and instituting bias-free ones.
The final groundbreaker to present was Teletha McJunkin. McJunkin was born and raised in Chattanooga; her Southern roots go back over 200 plus years. Except for three years, she lived all her life in Chattanooga. She received her bachelor’s degree in social work and her MPA from UTC. She spent almost 20 years as a social worker, working for nonprofits and in the social service sector. She worked in group homes and runaway shelters in Chattanooga.
McJunkin is immensely proud that she has railed against racism since she was in high school. She admitted that when she was a social worker, she unconsciously over-identified with Black people and especially Black women in an attempt to win their approval and to prove she was not racist.
Her career took a turn as the senior strategy advisor for EarthRights International, she now leads and coordinates international multicultural multilingual teams as they promote change and develop strategies in the area of human and environmental rights. She now leads a significant division of a global nonprofit with offices in Peru and collaborates with people from at least 25 different countries and with a remarkably diverse group of people from Mexico, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia. Her group focuses on Indigenous people’s rights and corporate accountability in relation climate justice and human rights. McJunkin is amazed that she, a White Southerner from Tennessee, has “witnessed over and again the power of diversity;” and yet observe “the actual inclusion people talk a big inclusion game but often don’t actually do it.”
McJunkin challenged all people, but especially White people to “look inside first, do you really believe” in inclusion or is it surface. She is concern that “often the reason the efforts to embrace diversity and practice inclusion fail is because people do not truly believe.”
The moderator, Deborah Levine, wrapped up the session sharing her childhood growing up in colonial British Bermuda being the only Jewish little girl on the island, which she thought was normal until her family moved to New York City. New York had different music, a different culture and she was different because she spoke English like a British person not like a US citizen. She was discriminated against not because she was Jewish, but because she had a British Bermudian accent and culture.
As I reflect, all the groundbreakers’ careers led them in different directions than they initially envisioned. However, no matter where the road took them, they were up to the challenge. And they as they moved ahead, they lifted up those around them, so that others both similar to themselves and different from themselves could break ground for those who followed. They truly served diverse communities.
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- DEI, Religion, and Hate Crimes –by Deborah Ashton, Ph.D. - January 16, 2024
- Two Iconic Women Who Inspire Me – by Dr. Deborah Ashton - March 13, 2023