Champions For Change

Debbie Dingell: Helping Another Woman (03/15/08) As vice chair of the General Motors Foundation and executive director of public affairs and community relations at General Motors, Debbie Dingell gets many requests for help from community groups. Yet, in 1995, when Deni Mineta, a friend of Dingell's who was then on the Suited for Change Advisory Council, asked for her help, she readily agreed.

Finding a Gift at Suited for Change: Felicia Evans Long (02/15/08) Felicia Evans Long still wears the brown tweed and deep lavender pantsuits she received from Suited for Change during two bouts of unemployment in 2002 and 2003. "They are classics. They don't go out of style," she says. Evans Long first became acquainted with Suited in 2002. She had been working for the Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority in Northern Virginia for less than a year when her father became ill.

Joyce Thomas: Retirement Interrupted (01/15/08) Joyce Thomas came to Suited for Change in 2002 as a volunteer personal shopper helping clients select professional attire. Having retired as a director in the human resources department of a major telecommunications company in New York City, she wanted to use her time to give back to the community. She had the freedom to do so because she was financially independent.

At the Curb for Suited for Change: Mary Ellen Callahan and Kathleen FitzGerald (12/15/07) 9:30 a.m., Saturday, December 1, 2007. It's a cold, sunny day in downtown Washington, D.C. A steady stream of cars pulls up to the curb outside 1010 Vermont Avenue to be met by two women bundled in cold weather jackets. For two-and-a-half hours, Kathleen FitzGerald and Mary Ellen Callahan will trade off greeting the cars' occupants as they help unload dresses, suits and overcoats onto a rolling clothes rack. Their ease with each other and with the donors comes from experience.

Kristin Henrikson: Young, Energetic and Cheap (11/15/07) When Kristin Henrikson was offered a job as Suited for Change's first executive director and only employee in 1994, she was participating in the Lutheran Volunteer Corps and working at the National Association of Service and Conservations Corps (NASCC). She was also headed to law school. She postponed her school plans and jumped at the opportunity.

At the Center of the Action: Robin Finnell (10/15/07) In 1994, Robin Finnell was new to the Washington area when she saw an ad for the Washington Women’s Show, a trade show organized around services to women. A stay-at-home mom who was bored, she put her one-year-old son, Evan, in his stroller and went to check it out. "The only thing that grabbed my interest was Suited for Change," she says. "I thought that was the coolest thing. … I just thought that being able to provide clothing and help somebody pick stuff out so that they could make their way into the world and be successful just sounded really enticing."

Nicole Wild: Turning the National Vision into Reality (9/15/07) By the mid 1990s, several programs like Suited for Change had cropped up around the country and their leaders had begun to discuss the advantages of working together. By 1999, this informal collaboration turned into The Women's Alliance (TWA), a national organization of independent community-based members who provide professional attire, career skills training and related services to low-income women seeking employment.

On the Ground Floor of Suited for Change: Claudia Askew (8/15/2007) Claudia Askew was 29 years old in 1992 and working as director of media relations for a trade association when Suited for Change came into her life and helped marry her public relations skills to her desire to help disadvantaged women.

Kathleen Matthews: Turning a Community Partner Into a Great Story (7/15/2007) When Suited for Change founder Lisa Woll called WJLA Channel 7 anchor Kathleen Matthews more than 12 years ago to ask if she would serve as emcee for a Suited for Change fundraiser, Matthews had never met Woll and had never heard of Suited for Change. When Woll explained Suited's work, Matthews thought, "What a brilliant idea."

A Perfect Fit: Nancy Chistolini and Suited for Change (6/15/2007) Of all the experiences she remembers in her thirteen-year association with Suited for Change, the most vivid in the mind of Nancy Chistolini, a retired senior vice president for Hecht’s Department Stores, are the fashion shows she helped organize with Suited for Change clients as the models.

Mary-Frances Wain: Hooked on Suited for Change (5/15/2007) Mary-Frances Wain says she lost her heart to Suited for Change nine years ago. She has been executive director, twice (1998-1999 and 2002-2006). She’s been a corporate and individual donor. When she isn’t employed by the organization, she’s a volunteer.

Suited to the Challenge: Lisa Woll (4/15/2007) Lisa Woll, Suited for Change’s founder, remembers the first time she knew the organization was here to stay. It was during Suited’s fifth anniversary celebration, held in 1997 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She looked around the room filled with several hundred people and realized that she didn’t know everyone there.

Leary Short: From the Streets to the Suited for Change Board (3/15/2007) Leary Short, the first former client to sit on the board of Suited for Change, calls her early life “a horror.” As a teenager growing up in Washington, DC’s tough Anacostia neighborhood, she was abducted and brutally raped. Decades of drug abuse followed. She gave birth to four children with four different fathers and turned to prostitution to support her drug habit. Finally, fed up and aware that there was a warrant out for her arrest, Short turned herself into an undercover cop and went to jail.

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