The editorial team has a special attachment to our new series, The Trailblazers: Rewriting the Narrative, because so many of us feel that media portrayals of women have been too one dimensional. Today, women are doing incredible things in all fields – from science and technology to finance, law, business, athletics and more. With the Trailblazers series, we hope to highlight and celebrate female role models, encourage more equal and just representation in the media, and help foster a more tight-knit community locally helping women find mentors, business partners, friends and more.
Below, you’ll find some incredible trailblazers from in and around Fenway, Symphony, and Jamaica Plain that we hope you will check out, follow and support.
Felicia Deneane
The sense of control I could yield with my body was both empowering and satisfying. It sparked a curiosity in me that fed my work tremendously. Sexually charged body parts, and the politics that are assigned to them, still inform my work today. Read more>>
Beth Yap
Good songs come out of bad times. This is the philosophy behind the music of singer-songwriter-bassist bittymacbeth. She’s gone from indie one-woman-band live-looper to innovative producer and bandleader – her most recent single. Read more>>
Lizi Ham
A couple years ago, I decided to hop on the denim jacket trend, but I wanted my jacket to go beyond keeping me warm by also saying something about my personality. All of the jackets I found were either too expensive or had designs that I had already seen before. I have always been driven by the unique so I figured I would simply paint myself my own jacket. That way, I would have complete artistic control and mine would be the only one of its kind. So, I found a design I liked on the internet, bought some paints, and unintentionally created my first Lizi Phoenix jacket. Read more>>
Christina Kostoulakos
Ever since I was a little girl, I had an itch to perform. My grandparents used to babysit me and they noticed my love for music and dance, so they enrolled me in dance lessons when I was about four years old. I continued that for a few years and as I got older, my desire to sing kept growing. I wanted to perform on stage so badly, but I was always too nervous to audition for anything. In middle school, I finally worked up the courage to audition for the play, “Oklahoma’ but as soon as I got on stage and started to sing, stage fright got the best of me and I ran off! I was mortified. I realized that I had to fix this so eventually at the age of 14, I started taking voice lessons. Read more>>
Lillie Marshall
I began my sites in 2009 when I took a leave of absence from teaching to travel the world alone for a year. When I left the country, I was burned out on education and New England, but getting that global perspective (particularly the months spent teaching in Ghana) renewed my passion for being an educator, and have informed and strengthened my teaching in Boston ever since I returned home. That time abroad also made me realize how much I love my home city! Read more>>
Seantel Trombly
When I first moved to Boston in 2013 to study architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology, I immediately started to discover the ways a diverse city community would alter the way I viewed myself. Soon after living on my own, I started to really uncover a lot of things about myself. Read more>>
Kinza Hussain
My interest in painting was influenced by my mother. She has several beautiful oil paintings dispersed throughout our home, and I hope to become as skilled as her one day. One of my closest friends asked for a canvas painting with her favorite quote on it, “For you, a thousand times over.” Read more>>
marissa ashcraft
With wise words from blogs and youtube, I slowly taught myself to sew with my first machine, a Singer. As I completed more projects, I realized that I needed a space to catalog my creations. Thus, my blog, One CrafDIY Girl (pronounced one crafty girl) was born. A lover of puns, my blog’s name is just that! Read more>>
Chelsey Green
ile developing her own band and brand, she went on to receive a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Maryland College Park. Most recently, Chelsey found her way to Boston after being appointed Associate Professor in the String Department at the Berklee College of Music. Read more>>
Cara Brostrom
The whole day walking about the farmland, exploring creeks and dirt paths. I was pretty autonomous from the beginning, and would go out exploring the square mile around my home on my own. This made for a rich inner life which still informs the way I work today. Read more>>
adrienne shishko
My career as an artist is the result of years of change and evolution; I went through several different careers before finding a way to express myself that truly fulfills every part of my being. I started by finding classes and smaller exhibitions in the Boston area. Read more>>
Natalie Gillard
A few years ago, a not so kind coworker barged into my office demanding that I train their employees. They even requested, in a condescending manner, that the training go below the surface, “this time”. Having trained their employees many times in the past. Read more>>
