A New Chapter for Women

22 years old Elise in a yellow African dress, holding neighbor's daughter, in front of a lush valley in Benin

When I was 23 years old and serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin, West Africa, I made a reckless mistake — I went biking without a helmet, fell, and suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly took my life. I had to leave the country and work that I loved and eventually found myself back in my mother’s house outside Buffalo, New York, going through a long and painful recovery. It felt like the end of my story. But it wasn’t. It was just the end of a chapter — and the beginning of a new one where I learned just how resilient I could be.

Years later, I was fired from my “perfect-on-paper” job without warning and given just an hour to leave. It felt like another chapter being ripped from my life book, one I had worked hard to write. But from that pain, another opportunity arose: Andrea Bertone – who I had met a few years earlier through a coalition I had created of likeminded women working to support gender equity – invited me to join her at FHI 360. Together, we built powerful programs to advance inclusive education, quality healthcare, economic empowerment, and freedom from violence in solidarity with women and youth around the world. That season became one of the most fulfilling of my career.

Now, with U.S. foreign aid cuts and waves of job losses affecting so many of us, it’s easy to feel like we’re back in that place with doors closing all around us. And when we’re in that place — driven there by loss, burnout, or economic instability — it can feel like nothing productive happens. Like we can’t see our next chapter. But networks and coalitions like the one that brought Andrea and I together can help to start conversations that let us imagine what a better future could look like.

And the truth is, this is hard. Seeing incomes lost, families forced to move, poverty rising – it all hurts. And yet, out of this moment, this need for conversation and community is why Andrea and I created Women Leading International. This is how we can open doors for others to walk through.

That’s why we’ve launched Women Leading Weekly: a space for women+ and allies around the world to share how they’ve turned pain into power. How they are working together to write their next chapter and open doors to a brighter, more productive future.

What do you want this Women Leading community to look like? What stories do you have to tell, and how can we open doors to let you accomplish your dreams and write YOUR next chapter?