Townsquare Media Tuscaloosa and the Glow Up Leadership and Mentoring Nonprofit Organization are celebrating Women’s History Month by honoring the Phenomenal Women of West Alabama.

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92.9 WTUG, Praise 93.3, 95.3 The Bear, ME-TV 97.5, Catfish 100.1, Tide 100.9, ALT 101.7, 105.1 The Block and our free digital news outlet the Tuscaloosa Thread is excited to recognize the empowered women of  Bibb, Fayette, Greene, Hale, Lamar, Perry, Pickens, Sumter, Tuscaloosa, and Walker counties.

Dr. Cassandra Simon is a Phenomenal Woman of West Alabama

 

Living in Alabama as a Black woman causes me to respond to this for all women, but especially for Black women. Next steps are to garner our collective power to reclaim our communities, our culture, equitable education systems, and invest in getting our children and ourselves to see our resilience, our strength, and how we move forward
in a society that still tells us no and that still treats us as a people less than. That collective power has brought us through slavery, Jim Crow, Segregation and continued systemic oppression with each generation learning more and growing stronger. It is time to be intentional in passing the torch and wisdom we have on to our younger generations of women who face the intersectional effects of racism and sexism on a daily basis.- Dr. Cassandra Simon

Dr. Cassandra Simon is an associate professor at the University of Alabama School of
Social Work and is currently Vice President of the Black Faculty and Staff Association.
A breast cancer survivor, Dr. Simon served 5 years as National Chair of the Susan G.
Komen for the Cure Breast Cancer Foundation African American National Advisory
Council, a member of their Comprehensive Inclusion Committee and their National
Multi-cultural Advisory Committee.

Dr. Simon is a trained diversity and conflict negotiation leader. She has conducted numerous workshops on culture, multiculturalism, diversity, and social justice, encompassing what is now known as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, with over three decades of teaching and workshop experience in these areas. She has won numerous awards for her teaching, research, service, commitment to students, community engagement activities, and commitment to justice and equity, including UA’s Autherine Lucy Foster Award, Buford Peace Award, and she was the first African American faculty recipient of the Premier Morris Mayer Award. Dr. Simon is the founding editor of the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship under the Office of Community Affairs at UA.

In 2015 she received the key to her hometown for being the first African American valedictorian of the previously all-white Lake Charles High School. Her current interests focus on the role and meaning of social justice in education and educational settings, social justice curriculum development, and the implementation of social justice in social work practice at every level. Development, implementation, and evaluation of change focused DEI in business, educational and community settings is the focus of her current. She has spent her entire career giving voice to the voiceless and has been characterized as a real truth to power speaker, daring to ask the hard questions and teaching others how to do the same.

 

West Alabama is a thriving area of the Yellowhammer State with women creating history at every step. If you know of a woman that deserved to be highlighted for her accomplishments please email maryk@townsquaremedia.com

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