The Guardian
Thoughtful, determined and unabashedly strong-willed, YWCA Madison CEO Eileen Mershart is celebrating the crowning achievement of her career while getting ready for the road ahead
By Meagan Parrish
Photographed by David King
Hair and makeup by Kendra Gassner
On a snowy afternoon in Madison, Eileen Mershart is making the rounds. Starting on the top floor of the YWCA’s main location, in one of downtown Madison’s tallest buildings near the Capitol dome, Mershart checks the progress of nearly completed renovations to the center’s living quarters.
Quick with a smile, she shows off new air conditioning units, updated furniture and freshly painted walls in the tiny refurbished apartments that will soon house local women and children. Weaving her way around piles of tarp and doors waiting to be hinged, she stops to chat with members of the construction crew scurrying to put the finishing touches on their day’s work while answering various questions—from the overarching plans of the project to the mundane details of making it come together.
With a style she refers to as “management by walking around,” Mershart has the unmistakable air of a leader. As CEO of the YWCA Madison, she guards the organization’s local efforts to end racism and empower women—a lofty goal rooted in the idea that safe, affordable housing can propel families on the path to a better life.
Now with the improvements to the YWCA’s headquarters completed at the end of January, the $16 million project—funded with both federal stimulus dollars and nearly $2 million in local donations—is a crowning achievement of Mershart’s long career. For a woman who has been elected to public office, served as the executive director to the Wisconsin Women’s Council, successfully advocated for policy changes that support women’s and minority rights, and won myriad honors such as the ATHENA award, which recognizes creativity and excellence in a professional field, and the National Organization for Women’s Feminist of the Year—that’s saying a lot.
To celebrate, the 66-year-old Mershert is moving on to the next frontier: retirement.
Known for her smarts and straight talk, Mershart reflects on the vital role the YWCA plays in Madison and how her personal life set the stage for her to understand and embrace the organization’s aims.
It was long ago that the groundwork for Mershart’s values began to take root. As a child she had a front row seat to a daily display of strength and determination by watching how her mother, all alone, raised Mershart and her brother after her dad died unexpectedly when Mershart was just 2.
Living near Wrigley Field in Chicago, Mershart’s mother worked at the city’s downtown Marshall Field’s store to provide for her kids.
“My mom did everything she possibly could do,” Mershart explains. “She was very resilient. She just … went to work.”
And while her mother may have led her children by example, her vocal message was about the importance of a classroom education.
“[She] was really supportive of education,” Mershart says, describing her mother’s insistence that Mershart go to college. “[She always told] me that I could do what I set out to do. She was a strong believer in that, [which] was always pretty powerful.”
Embracing her mother’s message, Mershart graduated high school and began working toward a degree at the University of Illinois-Chicago. But like many other students during the 1960s, her ideals were forming outside the classroom.
Mershart became involved in anti-war protests and the movement for increased women’s and minority rights. Social justice became her passion—and living in Chicago, she got a first-hand glimpse of the friction playing out in cities nationwide.
“I became aware at a young age that Chicago was a very segregated city,” she says. “During the mid ’60s, when the race riots were happening, the work of the civil rights leaders became very important to me. And the passion for politics was something I just started breathing at a very young age.”
Underneath the stirring of social currents, there was the exciting fervor for change. For Mershart, it became a call to action, influencing her goals for years to come. After getting married and relocating to Superior, Wis., Mershart busied herself at home and in the community—having two children and diving into the local political scene, first getting elected to the city council and then becoming active with numerous, local campaigns.
For the next decade, she stayed engaged in the world of politics and policy, serving on the city council for eight years and then returning to school at the University of Minnesota-Duluth to earn a master’s degree in social work. She spent years teaching social policy courses at both UMD and the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, even developing a course for a topic dear to her heart—women and social policy. Then opportunity came knocking from Madison.
Mershart was on a short list of candidates to be deputy secretary at the Wisconsin Department of Revenue. Taking the job would mean a chance to work in state government, but would also require a move to Madison—a six-hour jaunt from her home in Superior.
Weighing her obligations at home against her professional ambition, Mershart made a difficult decision. With her husband unable to find work in Madison, her children and husband remained in Superior while Mershart commuted weekly to Madison for work, and returned to Superior on weekends.
As the years went by, Mershart continued to make strides in her career, accepting positions at organizations such as the Milwaukee Nonprofit Center, the National Association of Social Workers in Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Women’s Council. At each step along the way she remained strongly committed to her values of social justice, advocating for various policy changes, from an amendment to scholarship rules to make them more accessible to women and minorities in the state to setting new requirements for state social workers.
But while her career thrived, Mershart’s situation at home had reached a breaking point. After 24 years, Mershart’s marriage ended. With her career solidly rooted in southern Wisconsin, she and her family each made the choice to remain where they were.
“It was very hard. They’re my kids and I love them dearly,” she recalls. “But they were in high school but I just couldn’t see pulling them out of school and bringing them to Madison or Milwaukee. It would have been so disruptive for them. And I figured eventually we would all come around—and we have.”
It was a challenging time, rife with lessons that would prepare Mershart for her future work. In addition to the beliefs she developed as a young student, politician, mother and social advocate, she became acquainted with a world where the need to bounce back from life’s sudden disruptions was paramount. These were the circumstances facing many of the women Mershart would soon encounter on a daily basis at the YWCA.
Inside the walls of the YWCA is a side of life many in Madison never see.
On each floor of their downtown Madison location, YWCA housing programs open doors to local women struggling with issues ranging from homelessness, living with a disability or fleeing abuse with kids in tow. As both a permanent and emergency landing place for women and families, the local organization
remains Dane County’s largest provider of long-term affordable housing for lower-income families. Some who walk through the doors need shelter for only a night. Others stay for decades.
The challenges facing local women and minorities have in many ways evolved, but the YWCA’s mission—to eliminate racism and empower women—has never wavered.
Originally known as the Young Women’s Christian Association, the organization long ago shed its religious emphasis to focus on social issues. As part of a global umbrella organization, the local YWCA has, for over a century, been a leader in spreading awareness of gender and racial disparities, advocating for increased rights and, of course, providing vital social services to families in need.
It’s a mission that Mershart found easy to solidly embrace. Not shy about sharing her political views, she does so with the calm ease of a woman who has given the matter serious thought. And although at first it can be easy to mistake Mershart for being a bit stern, when she smiles, her serious resolve melts away. Both personable and well-versed in the issues, Mershart knew when the position of CEO opened at the YWCA over a decade ago, that she would be the perfect match.
At the time, Mershart was executive director of the Wisconsin Women’s Council, but was ready to move on to a new position. In a way, leading the YWCA would bring her back to her roots and to the causes she became passionate about long ago in Chicago.
Today, Mershart’s role is usually about putting the pieces of the puzzle together: The programming, the funding, and the nuts and bolts of the operations—both proverbial and real. It can be a tedious job, full of long meetings and endless questions about every aspect of the work going on at their locations. But it allows Mershart the opportunity to lead the organization in new directions while
fulfilling the YWCA’s ultimate mission. Providing housing is one of the mainstays of how the organization seeks to achieve its goals.
Along with the current building rehab, Mershart was instrumental in hatching a plan to renovate the YWCA’s education facility with both a new home with a new name: The Empowerment Center.
“We had a place that we called ‘The Annex’ but I didn’t think that spoke to what it’s about. It’s an empowerment center,” she explains, describing how the idea for a new training facility was born.
“It all started when I was sketching a picture of a building … it was a pretty rudimentary drawing,” she says, laughing. “But in it I put all the parts of what I thought was an empowerment model. And now it’s real.”
Situated on the south side of Madison, Mershart’s brainchild has blossomed into an education facility that is a critical layer of how the YWCA strives to fulfill its mission. Opened a year and a half ago, courses at the Empowerment Center are a part of the YWCA’s work that goes beyond providing housing for local women, and addresses the root causes of why women walk through their doors. Various training programs
provide support in a host of subjects, from learning new job skills to understanding racism to after-school programs empowering young girls. It all goes back to what Mershart’s mother stressed long ago—empowerment through education.
And even if their goals are never completely reached, Mershart has witnessed how small, individual victories can still make a difference.
“I have learned that life has a way of dealing you things you don’t expect, and at the end of the day it’s what you do with those things that matter,” she says. “We [at the YWCA] don’t buy ‘down-and-out’ so much. We [think of it more as]: Where are you? What do you need? And how can we get you moving in that direction?
“I have seen some of our women at the YWCA come out of very difficult personal situations and rebuild their lives. It is truly transformative and inspiring,” she says. “In the end, we all have choices. And what is so important to know is that we are not alone. The YWCA is the embodiment of what that means.”
On all sides of Mershart’s corner office in the downtown YWCA building, mementos from her life’s accomplishments dot the walls. Awards stand on a shelf behind her desk. A white construction hat bearing Mershart’s name waits to be worn when she’s ready for a visit to the floors undergoing renovations. An oversized $70,000 check, presented at a recent Madison Club Foundation gala to help with the building improvements, sits propped in the window.
Despite the reminders of how far Mershart and the YWCA have come, she remains humble.
“I’ve been extremely lucky to find a place to work where my values and passions are in concert with the work we do,” she says.
Now that the renovation project—which not only restored the building’s exterior and lobby to resemble the building’s 1920s grandeur, but also remodeled the 99 resident rooms, replaced the roof and made the units more energy efficient—has finally come to a close, Mershart is content enough with their accomplishments to step down as CEO. She has strategically timed her retirement so that near the end of this year, she’ll be handing the reins to someone new.
“I did announce my retirement to our staff and board when I knew that … the work on the building would be successful,” she explains. “It is the right time for me to go and to pass on a strong and vital organization.”
But what’s next for Mershart remains to be seen.
“I have some time yet to think about [what I’m going to do],” she says, recalling a metaphor she encountered on a trip to the Georgia O’Keefe museum in New Mexico. “There was a quote [from O’Keefe]… and I’m paraphrasing. It said, ‘You can’t paint somebody else’s landscape, you have to paint your own.’ I’ve taken that to heart. So, I’m going to leave here and I don’t know what the next chapter will be, but there’s a landscape yet to be drawn.
“Having said that,” she continues, “I really want my grandchildren to know who I am. And I want to spend time with my kids, and do the next chapter of my life with her,” she says, motioning to a picture of her partner of two years, Sarah Hole.
Does her concern with spending time with her young grandchildren have anything to do with growing up without a father or the separation she experienced from her own children?
“Definitely,” she says without hesitation. “And my mom died when my kids were younger and I wish they would have known her,” she adds.
Along with quality family time, Mershart says she’s also looking forward to indulging more in a few of life’s simple pleasures: long walks, her book club and Monday Night Football.
And even after she passes her position to someone who she hopes, “… really understands the work that [the YWCA does] and what it takes to keep it all in harmony and moving forward,” Mershart isn’t disappearing from the community any time soon.
“I’m not going away,” she maintains. “There’s still too much work to be done.”
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