She4She

Supporting the Women of Today and Tomorrow

Heading Home is delighted to present a reimagined She4She, a virtual convening of women in Boston and beyond to support families on their paths out of homelessness towards housing independence.

Thursday, January 28, 2021

View the She4She 2021 Event Program Guide

The program will begin promptly at 4 pm with Janet Wu of Bloomberg News welcoming you to be inspired by incredible leading women in Boston as they share their stories about how they discovered their purpose and how they live each day following it.

First Lady of Massachusetts, Lauren Baker will welcome you and share her passion and purpose: supporting the 53,000 children in the Commonwealth living in DCF care. Dugana, a Heading Home client who is on her journey towards permanent housing, will welcome us into her story expanding on how she got to Heading Home and what lays ahead for her and her two-year-old son, Eliot.

Op-Talk Panel moderated by Host of Dining Playbook, Jenny Johnson:

Boston Police Superintendent Nora Baston (Bureau of Community Engagement)

Boston City Councilor and Mayoral Candidate Andrea J. Campbell

Co-Founder of Fresh Food Generation Cassandria Campbell

Boston Globe Columnist and CEO of Salient Ventures Diane Hessan

The Op-Talk will be followed by a Q & A with the four panelists and First Lady of Massachusetts, Lauren Baker.

Please contact Jillian Smith at JiSmith@headinghomeinc.org for any questions about the event.

She4She 2021 Guest Speakers

Nora Baston, Boston Police Superintendent

Superintendent Nora Baston is the Chief of the Bureau of Community Engagement and the 4th female appointed to the rank of Superintendent in the department’s history. The Bureau was created in 2018 by Police Commissioner Gross to strengthen connections and trust between Boston police and residents throughout the city.

A life-long resident of the City of Boston, Nora graduated from Boston Latin School and, upon receiving a basketball scholarship, completed both her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Criminal Justice at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Superintendent Baston is a 24-year veteran of the Boston Police Department and has been a member of the Command staff for 14 years.

For over 15 years, Superintendent Baston has continued to develop deep and meaningful relationships with the community by engaging with her neighborhood. She has received numerous community policing and leadership awards over the course of her career but is most proud of being able to give back by mentoring inner-city youth and newly appointed Police Officers. Superintendent Baston hopes her work can provide the youth opportunities they need to be successful and hopes to pave the way for more female representation within the Department.

Boston City Councilor Andrea J. Campbell

Andrea Joy Campbell’s vision for Boston is driven by her life story – the pride of growing up in Roxbury and the South End, the pain of losing her mother, father, and twin brother at an early age, and the foundation this city gave her to overcome long odds and become the first Black woman to serve as President of the Boston City Council.

Born and raised in Boston and educated in all Boston Public Schools, including Boston Latin School, Andrea went on to graduate from Princeton University and UCLA Law School. She was first elected District 4 Boston City Councilor in 2015, representing primarily the neighborhoods of Dorchester and Mattapan, as well as parts of Roslindale and Jamaica Plain.

On the Council, Councilor Campbell has established herself as an accessible, responsive, and pragmatic leader. She focuses on educational equity, improving public safety, criminal justice reform, affordable housing, and racial equity initiatives.

Cassandria Campbell, Co-Founder of Fresh Food Generation

Cassandria became a food justice advocate as a teenager working at The Food Project. After many seasons as a youth leader, she graduated from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in economics and returned to the organization as a youth coordinator. Eager to learn how cities can best help communities access resources, she pursued a degree in urban planning at MIT. After graduating in 2011, she worked in affordable housing development but was soon drawn back to the world of food. Cassandria came up with the idea for Fresh Food Generation out of a desire to find more real food options in her own neighborhood.

Diane Hessan is a successful entrepreneur, researcher, and author. She is the founder and Chairman of C Space, formerly Communispace, which was the first company to build online communities for market research, and which was ultimately sold to Omnicom. Diane was CEO of the company during 14 years of exponential growth, as C Space worked with hundreds of global brands to gain insight and inspiration from their consumers. A serial entrepreneur, Diane has consolidated all of her investment and advisory work into a new company called Salient Ventures, which helps accelerate the next generation of growth companies in tech. Most recently, Diane has researched voters across the U.S – first for the Clinton Campaign and now on her own. Diane has personally interviewed nearly 1000 voters from all states, ages, and ends of the political spectrum and is now online with them weekly as she looks for trends, shifts, and common ground. She has appeared on many national and local television shows and writes regular Op-Eds about voter sentiment.
Diane has 2 daughters and is also the founder of The Sound Bytes, an a cappella group that sings about business.

Janet is an Anchor/Reporter for Bloomberg, based in Boston, where she interviews entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Her Op-Eds and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Boston Magazine, and the 2018 “Norton Sampler of Essays.”

She graduated from Yale with a dual major in Philosophy and Psychology and earned a master’s degree in Journalism and International Affairs at Columbia University.

She is a founding member of SheGives, a philanthropic fund created by women. She is an Overseer for the New England Conservatory of Music and Franciscan Children’s Hospital and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Max Warburg Courage Curriculum.

She was named the 2015 New England Girls Scouts “Leading Woman of the Year” and delivered a TEDx Cambridge talk on exploration and resilience.

She plays the piano and cello and has traveled to 85 countries, 37 of them alone.

Jenny Johnson is a three-time Emmy Award-winning Executive Producer, Entertainment and Lifestyle Television Personality. She serves as a trusted mouthpiece for the hospitality industry alongside Billy Costa as the co-host of New England’s premier food program NESN’s Dining Playbook.

Johnson is also the host of “Comcast Newsmakers.” These interviews provide viewers with pertinent information from local, state, and federal officials, business and community leaders as a platform to connect with their constituents. Johnson’s entrepreneurial spirit lead her to the launch of Champy, a Sonoma sparkling wine that can be found in restaurants and retail locations throughout Massachusetts. Johnson is involved with numerous charitable organizations. She is an advocate and rider for the Pan-Mass Challenge. She emcees and hosts many events throughout the year. As an event facilitator, member of various local and regional boards, event emcee, and auctioneer, Jenny has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local and regional non-profit organizations. She sits on the board of the MRA (Massachusetts Restaurant Association), and Jack Connor’s Camp Harbor View.

Johnson is married to writer and Nantucket Magazine Editor Rob Cocuzzo. They currently live in Boston with their two-year-old daughter, Vienna. A Massachusetts native, she is an honors graduate from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in Communications. During her limited spare time, Johnson enjoys traveling, practicing Yoga, Pilates, rock climbing, hiking, and spending time with her husband, family, and friends.