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Making Change Happen:
Women Creating a Better Maine
The Power of Storytelling Video

2013 Leadership Luncheon

Celebrate five Maine leaders who with true grit, humor and discipline, create and encourage social change for women and girls. Be inspired by success stories from grantees The Community Schools at Opportunity Farm and Camden, Women Unlimited and Women Work and Community.

11am-12pm Networking reception. Meet the Fund’s 2013 Economic Security Initiative grantees.

12-2pm Lunch and Program

Meet our honorees.

Tribute to Women in Industry Awardee, Anne Taintor

“An Attitude Is a Terrible Thing to Waste”

The idea for Anne Taintor, Inc. came to Taintor in the early 1980s, when she was riﬂing through some vintage women’s magazines and found herself wondering what the perfect-seeming women shown on page after page were really thinking. Could that beautifully coiffed, pert housewife be as content—and vacuous—as she seemed? Taintor doubted it. She began to imagine their true inner thoughts (i.e. “I’m so happy it’s happy hour”). Soon she was pasting text onto images to create jewelry, magnets, and other products, which she began to sell. This was the beginning of Anne Taintor, Inc. The quirky, deadpan captions struck an immediate chord with the women who saw them. As Taintor’s sister Ellen says, “I think Anne really taps into what women are thinking. What she says is what people would like to say, but are too polite.”

Sarah Orne Jewett Awardee, Samantha Appleton

“When I first covered the Obama campaign, I got the same kind of feeling I got in Iraq, that this is one of the biggest things that will happen in my lifetime. I can’t help but get swept up in that.”

Samantha Appleton is a photographer concentrating on historic trends. She was most recently an Official White House Photographer for the Obama administration. The bulk of her career has covered many of the most tumultuous, man-made events of the past decade. Primary stories have included conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, social issues in Africa, and illegal migrant workers in the US. She began her career as a writer and became a photographer after assisting James Nachtwey. Her work strives to show that quiet, subtle moments make up the complicated components of large news stories. She has won numerous awards including Pictures of the Year, World Press Master Class, American Photography and Camera Arts. In addition to her photography, she is currently writing a non-fiction book about the War in Iraq.

Samantha Smith Awardees, Julia Bluhm, Maya Brown and Izzy Labbe

“We’re teaching girls and women to forever wage war against their bodies. It’s time to call a cease fire. Thankfully, that’s happening one amazing teen activist, one tweet, one petition at a time.”

Julia Bluhm, Maya Brown, and Izzy Labbe are members of the Girls Advisory Board of Hardy Girls Healthy Women, a Waterville-based nonprofit committed to changing the culture in which girls are growing. As bloggers for SPARK Movement, a national girl-fueled movement to challenge the sexualization of girls, co-founded by Hardy Girls, they blog and engage in activism both online and on the ground. Over the course of the last year, they have participated in intensive trainings with professional feminist organizers, activists and scholars. When Julia wrote a petition asking Seventeen Magazine to include one non-Photoshopped spread in each issue, Izzy followed up with a video of her school classmates critiquing the magazine’s beauty ideals, and Izzy and Maya blogged about the petition to raise awareness about the campaign. Seventeen responded with a Body Peace Treaty in the August 2012 issue in which the magazine committed to “celebrate every kind of beauty,” and pledged to never digitally alter girls’ faces and bodies.