YWCA honors six as Women of Achievement

Joy Bivens is no stranger to hardship.

When she was 9, the deputy administrator for health and human services at Franklin County bounced between homeless shelters and motels in Hamilton after her mother lost her house.

When no vacancy existed, the pair slept in a car and were separated for a year after the local Children's Services agency found out.

In an interview, Bivens said watching her mother navigate complex bureaucracy to receive government aid made her want to help others.

"I know for a fact that had my mother had someone who could have walked her by the hand to get her through the red tape from point A to point B, my life would have been a lot easier," Bivens said.

Bivens is one of six women being honored next year as YWCA Women of Achievement. In its 37th year, the award is given to women not only for their work, but also for furthering YWCA Columbus' mission of eliminating racism and empowering women.

The awards were announced Wednesday, and the group plans to meet in person in February.

Here is a look at each recipient:

Laura Espy-Bell

As a young girl, Dr. Laura Espy-Bell remembers watching a surgery being conducted on The Learning Channel. She was transfixed.

"I just remember sitting there and telling myself, 'I want to do that. I want to be that,'" Espy-Bell said.

Fast forward to the present day and Espy-Bell is an emergency medicine physician and associate medical director of Mid-Ohio Emergency Services.

She's also the founder of the Black Physicians Network, a support network for physicians of color, and "Made for Medicine," a program that aims to boost the number of Black students who pursue medical careers.

Less than 2% of Black physicians in America are Black women, according to Espy-Bell, who remembers being the only person of color during her medical residency.

"I had family here to support me," she said. "On my days off, I had people around me that could keep me grounded. But when you're at work, in the trenches and in stressful environments, it's definitively very isolating. I didn't want anyone else to go through that."

Joy Bivens

In addition to leading Job and Family Services, the county's largest agency, Bivens oversees the Office of Aging, Child Support Enforcement Agency and Office of Justice Policy and Programs.

Bivens said she also led the development of and helps oversee the Franklin County commissioners’ “Rise Together Blueprint,” a plan to address longstanding poverty in Greater Columbus.

"When you look at the data, (whether it's) 10 years, 20 years or 500 years ago, the same demographic of people — women and people of color — have continued to fall behind on the spectrum of social terms of health," Bivens said.

Angie Plummer

Angie Plummer's first job out of law school was at a Columbus law firm where she helped write policies for the state of Ohio. But she felt unfulfilled in her new role.

Plummer then saw a newspaper article in about a lawyer who volunteered their time for a refugee agency. She thought to herself, 'I don't know anything about immigration law, but I can learn.'

That refugee agency turned out to be Community Refugee & Immigration Services (CRIS), which Plummer has led since 2003.

Plummer said CRIS was once based out of a garage at the Watlao Buddhamamakaram Buddhist temple on the East Side. "It was just so much energy. Eight languages being spoken, everyone sharing one computer, but it was fantastic," she said.

Plummer started volunteering at CRIS in 1998 and became a part-time lawyer for the group in 1999. She remembers helping a woman from Somalia who had been diagnosed with cancer but didn't want to begin chemotherapy until her daughter came to America.

"The realization that I could spend my time helping make that happen versus going back to my state job where we were discussing margins on manuals and colors for whatever ... it just became clear to me that that was how I wanted to spend my time," Plummer said.

Despite being executive director of CRIS, Plummer said she tries to be as hands-on as possible. "I love meeting new people and being in a position to make a difference — a critical difference in their lives," she said.

Janica Pierce Tucker

In January 2020, Janica Pierce Tucker was named partner in charge of Taft Stettinius & Hollister's Columbus office, becoming the first Black woman to hold such a role at a large Columbus law firm. "I'm not necessarily the first across nationally, but there is a small number of us," she said.

Pierce Tucker is a member of Taft’s executive committee and serves as co-chair of Taft’s firm-wide diversity & inclusion committee.

"I hold many hats in the firm that allow me to leverage issues, particularly as it relates to the advancement of women and people of color," she said. "In order for you to feel as though I can be this, I can do this, it is very important and helpful that you see somebody that looks like you in that role.

Outside of Taft, Pierce Tucker is chair of the Legal Aid Society of Columbus' board of directors, a position she's held for the last two years. "That specifically goes to target issues that impact our community such as homelessness, discrimination in housing and landlord-tenant issues," she said. "I spend time dedicating pro bono hours to those missions.

"Services are the rent we pay for being here. For the blessings that have been given to us."

Linda Hondros

Linda Hondros is the owner and co-founder of Hondros Family of Companies, which is comprised of Hondros Education Group (Hondros College, Arizona School of Real Estate & Business, Hogan School of Real Estate, Hondros Learning, CompuCram, Learn Mortgage, Schlicher-Kratz Institute, Hondros College of Business, and Agent Connect), and National Background Check, Inc.)

Hondros College and other Hondros companies offers curricula tailored not just to recent college graduates, Hondros said. Many women — often middle-aged — who enrolled went on to have successful business and/or nursing careers, she added.

"There was the opportunity for us — my husband, John, and I — to provide this college experience for individuals that may have never gone to college but then chose to and became highly successful through the programs we offered," Hondros said. "I could see when they walked in in the beginning how unsure a lot of them were, but when they walked out in graduation, the power of educating people is one of the best gifts you can give to someone.

"We put thousands and thousands of people into the workforce through the years."

Joanna Pinkerton

Joanna Pinkerton, president and CEO of the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA), said women hold 15% of transportation jobs in America. "At COTA, we're more than double that number," she added.

"We're committed to making sure women have the same opportunities, knowing that their life situations are sometimes different," Pinkerton said. "They take on a disproportionate share of unpaid labor in the community.

"When you have a conversation about equity around women and race it's not about taking things away from other people. It's about making the table larger and creating those same opportunities for others."

In Pinkerton's mind, diversity of thought leads to better service.

"You're going to provide a better product," she added. "We are a community of 52% women in central Ohio and so we have to be thinking about the customer we're serving. My philosophy is that the room needs to reflect the community you're serving."

Monroe Trombly covers breaking and trending news. He can be reached at mtrombly@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @MonroeTrombly.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: YWCA honors six as Women of Achievement