We are Women-Led #IWD21

The Society Library is a female-founded and led organization. Here is the #herstory of the friendship of our two female leaders.

Sharon Hammond (left) is COO of the Society Library. She is a woman with black, curly hair. Jamie Joyce (right) is ED and President of the Society Library. She is a fair-haired woman with glasses holding a laptop. Text between them states “The Society Library is proudly women-led! Happy International Women’s Day!”

Before joining the Society Library full-time, Sharon and Jamie worked together at an international NGO called IDEASForUs; supporting local leaders and their sustainable development projects in over 20 countries. Jamie would eventually rise to become COO of IDEAS For Us, but before then, she actually started as a volunteer for Sharon, who was program director of a think/do tank that operated domestically and abroad.

While Sharon travelled the world to support local leaders’ sustainable development action projects, Jamie oversaw the funding and management of over 30 projects from the IDEAS for Us headquarters.

Empowering women was always of interest to both women, and when Jamie took over as Chairperson of the IDEAS For Us Solutions Fund (a micro-granting program), she noticed that the applicant pool was far from gender parity. So Jamie travelled to the United Nations to promote their program, and brought the applicant pool for micro-grants to reach gender equity.

Jamie and Sharon, who co-run the Society Library internship program, actually got their start teaching students by co-leading educational programs through IDEAS For Us at Rollins college and the University of Central Florida.

After years of working with incredible and impactful local leaders around the globe, Jamie and Sharon left to dedicate their time to the Society Library and work on a new, tech-based lever of social change. Sharon is now COO of the Society Library, and Jamie is President and ED. This has worked out incredibly well and the Society Library is proud to be women-led.

Happy International Women’s Day the world over!

The Society Library is a 501(c)3 non-profit digital library that builds educational databases of knowledge by extracting arguments, claims, sentiments, and evidence from books, academia, news, the web, and other media. The Society Library offers consultation services to improve logical, unbiased decision-making and teaches media literacy and argument modeling through a variety of educational internships.