Champions For Change

Suited to the Challenge: Lisa Woll

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. Her friends weren’t the bartenders. The board hadn’t catered the food themselves. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was honorary chair. Paul Berry of WJLA-TV was auctioneer for the live auction. “It was the moment I knew that Suited had gone beyond its founding board and was truly part of the community,” she says.

Woll got the idea for Suited for Change in 1992 after seeing a similar program in Chicago, her hometown. “I thought involving women who had more resources, to help women who were less fortunate was a really compelling idea,” she says.

Then 30 years old, Woll was working on low-income policy issues and was also at the beginning of what she calls “my entrepreneurial period in life.” Now that Suited is fifteen years older and so is she, she says, “I have since discovered that’s just who I am. I am partially an entrepreneur, partially an activist, and I’m partially an organization builder.”

Woll started Suited with a group of young friends, none of whom had any experience creating organizations. “I was looking for people who were willing to work," she says. She also wanted to give leadership opportunities to women under forty years of age, a goal that was reflected in Suited for Change’s mission statement for many years. ”Our executive director and our board were all young women. While they obtained great experience, Suited also benefited because there is no way women more advanced in their careers would have had the time to put into this,” she says. “None of us had any idea what it would actually take to start and nurture an organization. And that’s a good thing, because if I actually knew, I might never have done it. It’s an incredible amount of work.”

Woll and her friends began by floating their idea to government training programs and other non-profits in the District of Columbia. “We heard from every organization, ‘we need this,’” she says.

They made lists of everyone they knew and held a small fundraiser. A dinner guest of Woll’s came up with the organization’s name. A lawyer friend volunteered legal services. Woll’s apartment in Cleveland Park was the office and her home phone was the contact number. When people wanted to give clothes, she stored them in her hall closet.

Things really took off one Sunday morning at 6:00 a.m. when a local radio station aired an interview with Woll. By 6:30, her phone started ringing non-stop. “I had all these women calling me, saying ‘I really need clothes, can I come and get them?’” she recalls.

Woll and her brain trust got busy. During their lunch hours and after work they negotiated referral agreements with five job training programs so they could be sure Suited’s clients were low-income women getting ready to enter the workforce. They also signed a lease for basement office space at 15th and P streets. (Today, Suited works with some 160 agencies in the District, Maryland and Virginia. It is now in its third office – the first one above ground –in the bustling area off K street downtown.)

Suited’s first clothing drives were a revelation to Woll. She took delivery of a donation late one night at the office, expecting the clothes to have been sorted for appropriate work attire, as Suited requested. She looked at the messy, mixed pile of clothing and “burst into tears.” She was learning that people tend to clear their closets of everything they no longer want, much of which is not suitable for offices. “I don’t know about you, but I have never worn bunny slippers or a swim suit to a job interview,” she says.

Today, Suited maintains a high quality boutique with donations culled for quality and relevance to the job world, says Woll. And the small personal donations that got Suited off the ground have grown to include donations from thousands of individuals as well as financial and in-kind donations from foundations, community ourganizations and corporations.

After several years, it also became clear that while providing a client with a suit was one piece of the puzzle, “the reality was that many of our clients weren’t coming to us with the basic skills they would need to survive in a job and to obtain better ones,” says Woll. So Suited created its signature Professional and Lifeskills Development program (PLD). The PLD provides clients with information to help them secure and maintain professional employment and fosters personal growth.

Suited’s board has also changed. Today, it is not limited to women under forty and includes several high profile members, many of whom became involved when Suited formed an advisory council eleven years ago. (The council, which was formed to help Suited make connections, was folded into the board five years ago.)

Like the board, the majority of other people involved in Suited are volunteers. ”We are an organization that would cease to exist if our volunteers disappeared. We’re one of the only organizations in Washington that involves so many people from the community in so many innovative ways. We also provide a combination of services that no one else does,” says Woll.

Woll’s experience with Suited led her to help found a national organization of independent programs doing similar work across the country. “Suited sponsored the first meeting of what became The Women’s Alliance and I was very involved in its early years,” says Woll. “I could see that all of our individual programs would be better served by having a national organization for networking, sharing best practices, and developing public relations on a national scale.”

Looking back, Woll says she derives satisfaction from the services Suited has provided clients and the women’s lives Suited has changed, and also from the extensive network of people she has had a chance to work with. “Whether it was starting Suited for Change or The Women’s Alliance, what kept me at the table was the thrill of the collaborative process, the fun of working with others to bring a dream to life,” says Woll.

In the future, Woll would like to see Suited offer new, innovative programs that reach more women. She would like to see a sophisticated branding and media campaign to further raise Suited’s profile.

She also believes Suited should be involved in advocacy around issues affecting low-income women, from minimum wage to housing to welfare reform. “We need to be at the table when policy is being discussed,” she says. “Our clients have relevant, important stories to tell.”

Suited for Change thanks Kathleen Currie, a Washington, D.C. freelance writer for writing the profiles and Dara Walsh, a freelance Washington, D.C. photographer, for photographing some of the profilees.

Suited for Change © 2006 . All rights reserved.