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Women's History Month 2021
March is officially Women’s History Month, and all month long we are celebrating all the stories, successes, and sources of empowerment women of all backgrounds have given the world throughout human history.
This officially marked observance is truly an 80’s child, beginning in 1981 when Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28 which authorized and requested the President to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982 as “Women’s History Week.” Over the next 5 years, Congress passed joint resolutions dedicating an arbitrary week in March to Women’s History. In 1987, Congress passed Pub. L. 100-9, making March 1987 the first “Women’s History Month.” Thereafter, between 1988 and 1994, Congress passed additional resolutions requesting and authorizing the President to proclaim March of each year as “Women’s History Month.”
We are proud to celebrate all the women who have come to Cambridge College earnestly seeking an education, persevered through unique life challenges, and achieved success while adding to our society against all odds and pre-built conventions. This Women’s History Month, we are sharing the stories of four women who have heralded greatness and shown their true inner power as exemplary Cambridge College alumni.
Featured Cambridge College Alumnae
Karen Miguel
Master of Management, '09
Karen Miguel graduated from Cambridge College in 2009 with a Master of Management and has used her leadership talents, combined with her background in nursing, to lead a team of frontline healthcare responders to brace for the COVID-19 pandemic before it found its way into the country.
Miguel has been a Patient Safety Officer at Mass General Hospital since 2007, where she manages patient safety while hospital-wide initiatives are developed and implemented. More recently, her team prepared the hospital for surging COVID cases, analyzing global patient data as it continued to evolve. In studying the data, they found survival rates improved when patients were ‘proned,’ i.e. flipped off their backs and onto their stomachs, which helps support oxygenation. Armed with this knowledge, Miguel’s task was to lead a special Proning Team, which scaled this life-saving practice out across the hospital.
All the while the pandemic continued to relentlessly tax and devastate the country from the inside, Miguel says she was buoyed and anchored by support from fellow hospital staff and her family: "Especially my mom was such a source of support for me during these past months. She has sent an inspirational text message every single day by 7 a.m. since we started the team! Love her!"
Read more about how Miguel has been working to help mitigate the effects of the pandemic. [Photo: Kate Flock]
Debbie Cavalier
Master of Education, '93
Debbie Cavalier has made a successful career in the world of music education, beginning at Cambridge College in 1993 when she earned her master’s degree in education, leading up to her current positions as Berklee School of Music’s Senior Vice President of Online Learning and Continuing Education and Grammy-winning lead singer/keyboard player in the children’s band Debbie and Friends.
While attending Cambridge College, Cavalier’s goal was to leverage her education towards an increased salary and better viability as an educator within the music business. As part of her final project with Cambridge College, she developed a recorder method book for the classroom which ultimately landed her a publishing job with Warner Bros.
“Cambridge College gave me what I needed to take my career to the next level, and in the direction I wanted to go,” said Cavalier.
Cavalier says her time at Cambridge College is ultimately what put her on the path toward an executive-level career in music publishing, where she’s written more than 100 music education methods books and arrangements for Carl Fischer, Alfred Publishing, and Warner Bros. Publications, the latter of which founded her a senior VP / CEO role with Berklee’s online school.
Priya Samant
Master of Management, '10
Cambridge College alumna Priya Samant, MM ‘10, is an accomplished technology consultant and social entrepreneur who uses her education and personal success to help raise up the underserved residents of her home village in Mumbai.
Samant started her career working in the technology sector for ICICI Bank, Bank of America, and AT&T. She was an advisor on Hillary Clinton’s Technology and Innovation policy committee during her 2016 presidential campaign. She is a member of Akshaya Patra Boston, a speaker catalyst at TEDxBeaconStreet, and in 2018, she was appointed as an advisor to Startup Council, India and SME Chamber of India. In addition to executive-level consulting work, Samant regularly conducts workshops on entrepreneurship for women and girls.
No matter how far up the ladder of Corporate America she climbs, however, Samant’s heart never roams far from her home community in India.
In 2009, she founded a company called Earthfrendz, which gives skilled local artisan embroiderers and fabric weavers an online platform to sell their upcycled merchandise on a global scale. Earthfrendz gives 5% of its profits to a health trust a few hours north of Mumbai that provides care for those in need, regardless of caste, religion and financial status. Current initiatives include a hepatitis B immunization program, free health clinics, a leprosy eradication center, and chronic disease prevention and treatment.
“Poverty is life for countless numbers of people throughout the globe,” says Samant, “and there is no magic wand that can eliminate this situation. But we can definitely do our part to help them. Purchasing Earthfrendz products uplifts the poor by giving them work, which in turn helps them to fulfill the needs of their families ... and provide basic education to their kids.
Stacey Borden
MEd in Mental Health Counseling, Trauma and Addictions, '16
CC alumnus Stacey Borden holds a master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling with a concentration in Trauma and Addictions. She is also a living embodiment of transformative action as a former incarcerated woman turned community uplifter.
As an author, performance artist, motivational speaker, activist, and Founder/President of New Beginnings, Re-entry Services, Borden works to help incarcerated women heal from trauma and reorient their lives towards achieving sustainable success upon reentry into society. Her journey towards finding this purpose began with Borden’s connections with fellow inmates while she was incarcerated at MCI-Framingham women’s prison.
With the surging rates of COVID infections hitting prisons the hardest, Borden is concerned about the safety of her contacts at MCI-Framingham who keep her updated on the deplorable living conditions, where roughly half of the women inmates have tested positive for the virus, and some have even developed chronic health conditions they didn’t have going into the prison.
Currently, Borden is working with Families for Justice as Healing on a clemency campaign aimed towards freeing women prisoners in Massachusetts who are aging, sick, survivors of sexual violence, and women who have served decades of time already. One of their direct points of action is calling upon Governor Baker to use some of his clemency powers to help mitigate the suffering of this neglected community during the COVID crisis.
Deborah C. Jackson, President of Cambridge College
This year marks President Deborah Jackson’s 10th anniversary in service to Cambridge College as its dauntless leader. Maneuvering the college through thick and thin, growth and acquisition amidst pandemic and recession, Deborah C. Jackson is the fourth person to officially preside over the school’s 50-year legacy of providing affordable, accessible, and quality higher education to underserved adult learning communities across Massachusetts, California, Puerto Rico, and online.
“Over 60% of our students are the first in their families to go to college. Not only are our students very diverse — my staff, my faculty, my cabinet, my executives are very diverse. I would put my team, in terms of diversity, up against any other college in the Commonwealth. Because that’s something we pride ourselves on. We actively make that happen,” said Jackson in a recent interview with El Mundo Boston.
Before taking the helm of Cambridge College, Jackson led for nearly a decade as CEO of American Red Cross of Massachusetts, and prior to that, as Vice President of the Boston Foundation and Senior Vice President of Boston Children’s Hospital. She started out her career as Director of the Health Care and Income Security Group at Abt Associates, which is one of the nation’s top global research and consulting firms.
Jackson’s commitment to seeking equitable health and education access for low income populations shows in her active participation on a number of local boards and committees, including the Mayor’s Task Force to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, the American Red Cross National Diversity Advisory Council, the board of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, the American Council on Education’s Commission on Educational Attainment and Innovation, and the American Student Assistance Corporation. She is also the first woman in Eastern Bankshares, Inc.’s 200-year history to serve as Lead Director of the board.
Jackson holds a number of awards and accolades, including being named one of Boston Business Journal’s “100 Most Influential Leaders” for multiple years, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s 2019 Academy of Distinguished Bostonians, Boston Magazine’s “100 Most Influential Women in Boston,” and El Planeta Newspaper’s “100 Most Influential People for Latinos.” She was named a fellow of Boston University's Graduate School of Business / Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies, and Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Institute. She was also made an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by both Curry College and Merrimack College.
More Trailblazing Women
For centuries, our society has benefitted from the courage, intelligence, hard work and perseverance of countless women, most of whom faced hardship and gender barriers. One woman who championed LGBTQ+ rights was Marsha P. Johnson.
Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson was a drag performer and trans rights activist who was a driving force behind the Stonewall Riots, which ushered in a new era of LGBTQ+ rights in a predominately heteronormative society. The riots themselves, which took place on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, were a direct response to members of the LGBTQ community being harassed by the NYPD’s sixth precinct.
In 1970, Johnson established, with the help of Sylvia Rivera, the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), which was an organization devoted to curbing homelessness amongst transgender teens living in New York City. For a few years in the 70s, the group helped provide shelter and other services to LGBTQ people experiencing homeless in New York, Chicago, California, and England, before eventually disbanding.
On July 6, 1992, Johnson was tragically murdered at the age of 46. While NYPD officials originally ruled her death a suicide, transgender activist Mariah Lopez fought for her case to be reopened for investigation in 2012.
Marsha Johnson was originally born to the name Malcolm Michaels Jr. on August 24, 1945, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She graduated from Thomas A. Edison High School in 1963, before briefly joining the United States Navy for a stint. Afterwards, she moved to New York’s Greenwich Village where she became homeless and engaged in sex work as a means of survival. It was in the Village that Johnson found purpose and acceptance as a drag performer, touring the world with a group called Hot Peaches.
“I was no one, nobody, from Nowheresville until I became a drag queen. That’s what made me in New York, that’s what made me in New Jersey, that’s what made me in the world,” said Johnson.
[Photo credit: Netflix]
Read the stories of many other accomplished women on the National Women’s History Museum website.
