2024 Luncheon Awardees
YWCA Boulder County is thrilled to announce our 2024 Better Because of Her luncheon awardees:
Better Because of Her: Nan E. Joesten
Active Ally: Reiland Rabaka, Ph.D.
Energizing the Future: Isabella Grace Cohn
A reformed engineer and lawyer, Nan first honed her judgment through experience and training at Procter & Gamble. As a chemical engineer and later as a brand manager, she guided manufacturing teams to deliver key factor performance and helped bring new products to market on time and under budget.
After law school, Nan tried complex commercial and intellectual property cases and counseled clients ranging from startups to Fortune 50 companies. Nan chaired her firm’s professional development program, and as an early advocate for the advancement of women in the profession, founded her firm’s women’s initiative. Nan was national co-chair of the American Bar Association’s women trial lawyers committee and led the ABA’s Judicial Intern Opportunity Program in San Francisco, fundraising and recruiting judges to provide paid summer judicial clerkships for law students of color typically underrepresented in the profession. Nan was president of the Berkeley Law Alumni Association, and received the UC Berkeley Trustees Citation Award and Berkeley Law’s Young Alumni Achievement Award.
Nan served on the Engineering Advisory Council at her alma mater, the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She later joined the college’s BOLD Center Advisory Council collaborating with stakeholders to advance justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
After Nan and her husband Hank relocated to Boulder, Nan joined the YWCA of Boulder County board, eventually serving as president. She was thrilled to be able to attend the most recent YWCA World Council meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2019.
Isabella is a 21-year-old student activist and filmmaker currently studying for her Bachelor of Fine Arts. Isabella is the director and videographer of Watch You Rise, a documentary about a 21-year-old filmmaker (herself) who embarks on a cross-country journey to uncover the roots of sexual assault, interviewing young adult survivors, perpetrators, and experts.
Isabella’s path toward creating Watch You Rise began five years ago when she started the Me Too Teen Project. This online website/portal provides teens with a safe and healing space for reading and sharing stories of survival and hope after sexual abuse, assault, or threatened harm. The website has reached every continent and all 50 states. Her work with the Me Too Teen Project included significant fundraising for nonprofits working with sexual assault. Isabella received local, state, and national attention from multiple news outlets and an invitation from the Boulder D.A. to be the lead speaker for sexual assault awareness month in 2018 and 2019.
In 2020 Isabella began creating Watch You Rise, interviewing throughout her senior year of high school. After starting college, she spent 2021-2022 interviewing youth and young adults from all different walks of life. Isabella completed a Sundance Festival Collab class on Documentary Filmmaking, and began her fundraising work in earnest.
Isabella shared Watch You Rise at her local YWCA, Safe House Alliances, Moving to End Sexual Assault, Out Boulder, the Boulder D.A., and the Restorative Justice programs. Isabella also interviewed Dr. Annie Farmer, a licensed psychologist and a youth survivor of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
You can donate to Watch You Rise on Isabella’s Gofundme page to help her support her groundbreaking work!
Reiland is a Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies and the Founder and Director of the Center for African & African American Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also a Research Fellow in the College of Human Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA).
Professor Rabaka has published 19 books and more than one hundred scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays. His books include The Negritude Movement; The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism; and Du Bois: A Critical Introduction. A wing of his work has made significant contributions to African American musicology, and his books in this area include Civil Rights Music: The Soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement; Black Power Music!: Protest Songs, Message Music, and the Black Power Movement; Black Women’s Liberation Movement Music: Soul Sisters, Black Feminist Funksters, and Afro-Disco Divas; The Funk Movement: Music, Culture, and Politics; Hip Hop’s Inheritance; Hip Hop’s Amnesia; and The Hip Hop Movement.
Professor Rabaka has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, the National Museum of African American History & Culture, the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Institution, the Eugene M. Kayden Book Award, the Cheikh Anta Diop Book Award, and the National Council for Black Studies’ Distinguished Career Award.
He has conducted archival research and lectured extensively both nationally and internationally, and he has been the recipient of several community service citations, distinguished teaching awards, and research fellowships. He is also a poet and musician.