MICA and LCSL kick off Women’s History Month with a discussion on women’s leadership

Keynote speaker at the first celebration of Women’s History Month, Phyllis Johnson opens up the events at the University of Maryland on March 2.

As she was packing her bags Monday morning, Phyliss Johnson looked out to the University of Maryland and thought “I made it.”

Johnson spoke to the University of Maryland students and faculty on the afternoon of March 2 in the Prince George’s room in the Adele H. Stamp Student Union. Her talk was the first event of the Women’s History Month celebration. 

This year marks 100 years since the passage of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote. The national theme of this year’s Women’s History Month was named accordingly as “Valiant Woman of the Vote.”

The Multicultural Involvement & Community Advocacy (MICA) and Leadership Community Service-Learning (LCSL) offices in Stamp Student Union co-sponsored this event as a part of the “Voices of Social Change” lecture series under the LCSL office. 

“Women of color were also forced to wait nearly 50 years after that passage to the 19th amendment to gain proper access to the ballot box,” Erica Simpkins, MICA Program Administrative Specialist, said. “But their contribution to the protests and demonstrations were critical to the amendment’s passage.”

Johnson, the keynote speaker of the afternoon and president of BD Imports, co-founded her company with her husband in 1999. The company imports coffee from many regions. In her time there, she has toured several East African countries, including Rwanda and Ethiopia. 

Attiyya Chisolm, a senior neurobiology and physiology major with a minor in black women studies, introduced Johnson.

“Today we are here to examine the themes and intersections of women and their leadership to advance social change in the topic of fair trade global coffee phenomenon,” Chisolm said.

In her talk, she highlighted the challenges of navigating a male-dominated workspace, helping women help their communities and identifying allies.

Early in their career, Johnson and her husband traveled to Kenya to meet with coffee farmers. She was shocked when men only addressed her husband and ignored her.

“Do they not know all the effort, all the work I put in?” she asked herself. 

Her husband told these men she was the one who made the business deals and she was the one with the palette, and after a few chuckles only then did they start acknowledging her. 

In her travels, she also visited a coffee farmer in Rwanda who she had purchased from several years ago. She recognized how that one woman impacted her community through the selling of her coffee. 

“I knew that it was more than a business for them. It was a community,” she said with tears in her eyes. For these women, coffee was much more than just making a living. 

In the coffee industry, she had the unique position of working in the coffee fills with the women and boardrooms with the men. 

Johnson emphasized the importance of identifying your allies and finding opportunities to work together. 

“Stay at the table,” she said. “There are times when I really just wanted to leave but staying at the table gave me the insight that I have today. It gave me the insight and the knowledge. It gave me the opportunity, and it gave me the respect.”

Craig Slack, a member of the audience and Assistant Director of the LCSL, asked Johnson if there was a group of young girls here, how could they evolve their leadership identity.

“Drop the imposter syndrome. Drop it,” Johnson said. “You’ve made it well before you think you’ve made it.”