LEADING LADIES


Apr 26, 2023

Meet the next generation of female leaders on Nantucket.

story by Robert Cocuzzo

photography by Kit Noble

Female leadership is sewn deep into the fabric of Nantucket, perhaps more than in any other community in Massachusetts. There is no shortage of historical examples of women taking the lead on the island, whether in business with Petticoat Row, astronomy with Maria Mitchell, social justice with the early abolitionists and suffragists, or countless other lesser-known women who took up the work of running Nantucket while the majority of men were off whaling.


That legacy of strong female leadership continues to this day and can be seen in every dimension of the island, from town government to business to education to health care. In recent years, this trend has become particularly evident in a cadre of women who are now serving as executive directors of some of the community’s most important institutions. Here is a selection of those individuals who are helping to define the next generation of female leadership on the island.


COURTNEY BRIDGES

"The landscape of female leadership is strong on the island,” says Courtney Bridges, the executive director of the Artists Association of Nantucket. “You see that some of the more feminine qualities of leadership keep everybody together. You have your trailblazers, like your Sheryl Sandbergs, who sing the song of ‘you can be a great leader if you act with more of a masculine leadership style.’ But I think, here on island, you can embrace the feminine leadership style—you can be empathetic, you can be collaborative—and those traits are rewarded here.”


Courtney has checked a lot of boxes during her many years on Nantucket: teacher, co-owner of two small businesses and executive director of two nonprofits. Prior to her current post at the Artists Association, which she has held since 2018, Courtney spent five years as a teacher at the Nantucket Lighthouse School followed by four years leading the Small Friends Early Learning Center as its executive director. While working those full-time day jobs, she and her husband, Jason, also owned and operated Nantucket Bike Tours as well as Handlebar Café, which they sold three years ago to Ring founder Jamie Siminoff.


Along with championing the Artists Association’s seventy-five-year mission of fostering the visual arts on Nantucket, Courtney is a full-time mom to daughter Eloise with another child about to be born at press time. “Instead of small businesses, I now have small children,” she says. “To me it’s about integrating your family life with your work life...As long as you’re willing to have a barnacle baby and not an anchor, then I think you will be successful.”

CARLISLE JENSEN

At just twenty-eight years old, Carlisle Jensen became one of the youngest nonprofit executive directors when she took the lead at Egan Maritime Institute last summer. “But you could say that I’ve been working in the nonprofit sector for twenty-five years,” she says. The daughter of Cecil Jensen who, prior to her current position as executive director of ReMain, held similar leadership roles at the National Historical Association, Nantucket New School and Artists Association, Carlisle grew up immersed in the nonprofit world, spending her after-school time stuffing envelopes and observing her mom in action.


"From day one, I thought I learned more after school than I did during it,” she says. “We were given this opportunity to watch our mother become an incredible leader and how she managed staff and balanced everything...I loved it.”


Indeed, representing the next generation of female leaders on the island, Carlisle firmly believes she’s standing on the shoulders of those women who mentored her. In addition to learning from her mother, Carlisle became an intern under Melissa Murphy during Murphy’s tenure as executive director of the Dreamland. Then, after college, it was off to her most recent post working alongside Margaretta Andrews and Jeanne Miller at the Community Foundation for Nantucket. When Carlisle was selected for the executive director role at Egan, Pauline Proch and Jean Grimmer helped her get up to speed.

“As someone so young coming into this position, there’s a lot of opportunities to fail,” Carlisle admits, “and I think that I have succeeded because I know that I have fellow females I can call whenever something comes up and they help me through the problem.” She adds, “Nantucket is a great model for how the world should be run. If you look at history and you think of Petticoat Row, we’ve always had really strong, smart female leaders keeping this island going. I think it’s been like that since day one, and I think it continues to be like that.

ALICIA GRAZIADEI

When Alicia Graziadei attended Nantucket Public Schools growing up, the majority of the principals and vice principals were men. Today, the leadership of Nantucket’s public education is predominantly female, beginning with superintendent Elizabeth Hallett and extending to most of the principals and all of the vice principals. Today, as the director of the Nantucket Community School, Alicia is part of this emerging contingent of female leaders in education.


“It’s pretty amazing coming to the table with all these strong women,” says Alicia, who, after spending eleven years at Nantucket New School in various roles from teacher to Dean of Studies, was made the director of Nantucket Community School last July. “It’s a powerful time to be a female leader in this community. I go into these meetings with all these women and we’re collaborating, working together, and I just feel like we’re getting so much done right now.”


As director of Nantucket Community School, an extension of Nantucket Public Schools that provides a wide array of programming from early childhood education to youth classes and camps to adult education to even driver’s ed, Alicia has made supporting working mothers one of her focuses. Not only is she striving to expand access to after-school programs and child care available through Nantucket Community School, but she’s also reimagining positions in her organization to be more conducive to working mothers. “I’m working to make my leadership roles more appealing to working mothers so that they can have time to work from home and overcome that child care piece that gets in the way of taking these roles.”

In looking toward the up-and-coming generation of female leaders, Alicia says that the pressures on young women today are much different than what she encountered growing up. “Social media is a new hurdle,” she explains. “[Young women] have such a wider platform of people giving them feedback on all aspects of who they are—whether it’s physical appearance or personality—that I think it’s harder for them to be confident in who they are without outside feedback.” Alicia says that parents modeling healthy technology use is one way to counteract the insidiousness of social media. By parents putting their own boundaries around social media and technology, their children are more likely to embrace similar behaviors.



Fortunately, this next generation of young women have people like Alicia to look up to in the senior ranks of public education, which wasn’t exactly the case when she was growing up. “I now feel like I am part of this new elite club of woman,” she says. “I don’t feel isolated because there are so many people in roles like mine that I would feel comfortable picking up the phone and asking a question.”

JOANNA ROCHE

"I don’t think it’s an accident that we have this emergence of strong leadership that is female,” says Joanna Roche, who was made the executive director of the Maria Mitchell Association two summers ago. “This island, this Gray Lady, has birthed these women who have had many opportunities here to lead and to learn and to work in a way that I think is different than in [mainland] America.” Appropriately, Joanna points to the namesake of her organization, the early nineteenth-century astronomer Maria Mitchell, as one of the matriarchs of this female-empowered culture that continues to flourish on the island today. “Maria Mitchell was a changemaker,” she says. “She existed in the Nantucket of that era because Nantucket was this incredibly special place where women had rights that they didn’t have in other communities.”


Evidence of this, Joanna says, could be seen in the fact that Nantucket became the first place where women had the power of attorney. The island was also the first place that allowed for what was known as the Boston Marriage, legally enabling two women to marry and combine households so that they could support one another while their husbands were at sea. “It wasn’t about sexuality; it was about legality,” Joanna says. “So a lot of the change that we see happening in our society today is the same kind of change that was happening back then.”


Prior to assuming her post at Maria Mitchell, Joanna held several positions in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, on island and off. Before moving to Nantucket, she was executive vice president and chief strategist for a major marketing firm in Manhattan. Here on Nantucket, she’s done everything from serving as a director at the Westmoor Club to hosting a radio program on ACK-FM to most recently running a global nonprofit fusing wellness and sustainability.


I really feel like it’s my responsibility to make sure that other young woman believe they can do some of the things that I have done, particularly around volunteering for the town,” says Joanna, a mother of two high school students who serves on both the Town’s Finance Committee and the newly formed Coastal Resiliency Advisory Committee. “One of the obstacles that I have heard people say is that it’s going to take time away from my family, but I really feel that women who volunteer are actually setting an example to their family.”

KALEY KOKOMOOR

Some people were surprised when Kaley Kokomoor threw her hat into the ring for the executive director position of the Nantucket Book Festival last year. “Because I had been a little bit of a wallflower,” Kaley admits. “I like to think I am a listener first. I try not to be quick to jump in. Instead, I like to take in the information, understand the people and the different issues and topics I am dealing with, synthesize a bit, and then come back with thoughtful dialogue, questions and leadership.


”The Nantucket Book Foundation board agreed with Kaley’s approach and officially made her the successor to another strong female leader, Maddie Hjulstrom, who had been executive director for the better part of a decade before retiring in 2022.


Relatively new to the island, having moved to Nantucket in 2017 after teaching elementary school in Connecticut as well as on a small island off the coast of Maine, Kaley began working at Small Friends before taking a position at the Atheneum where she went from the development office to becoming the library’s communications and outreach coordinator. She made the move over to the Book Festival part time on the eve of the pandemic and helped facilitate that year’s successful all-virtual events.


Now leading the Book Festival, what has become one of the country’s most popular literary gatherings, Kaley is committed to strengthening the mission established by its female-led team, most notably its co-founders Mary Haft and Wendy Hudson as well as its literary committee chair Tharon Dunn. “We celebrate the transformative power of words to inspire, illuminate, educate and connect us,” Kaley says of the Book Festival’s mission statement. Part of that, she indicates, is creating programming that can nurture the next generation of leaders. For instance, this year’s festival will showcase an all-female panel of feminists discussing the impact of climate change.

Above all, Kaley champions the life-changing power of the written word. “We live one life. We walk our path and we meet the people that we meet on that path. We all get this one life and the experiences that we have,” she muses. “Whereas, when you read a book, you’re opening your mind and your entire philosophy to being shaped by other people’s stories and other people’s experiences. I think that’s important for everyone, but especially for women who can often feel hemmed in and not see all the opportunities available to them.

SHANTAW BLOISE-MURPHY

When Shantaw Bloise-Murphy assumed the role of director of Culture and Tourism for the Town of Nantucket last year, she was already a familiar face to many on the island. A graduate of Nantucket High School, Shantaw had been heavily involved in the community for years, most recently serving as business manager and interim CEO of the Chamber of Commerce. But, as she says, there’s much to her story that most are not aware of.


“A lot of people don’t realize where I come from,” the thirty-two-year-old says. “They realize I’m from Jamaica, but I’m from one of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods where I experienced a lot of violence and poverty. My move to Nantucket was not a traditional move at all. I went from being homeless on the streets of Montego Bay with my mom to being a homeowner on Nantucket...I literally climbed out of the trenches to be here.


With her fortitude forged by hardship, Shantaw has emerged as an exemplar to other woman, particularly young Black women on the island. She draws inspiration from historic island icons like Florence Higginbotham. “I am a Black woman on Nantucket; needless to say, our climb to leadership is a little different than that of my white female friends,” she says. “Having someone to look to like Florence has constantly reminded me that I am allowed to dream. The things that I want for my life and my family are absolutely attainable on Nantucket, no matter how difficult it might seem at times.”

Florence Higginbotham aside, there is one woman who is always front and center in Shantaw’s mind. “I think about my mom who was a single, teenage mother who found herself homeless and who dug herself out of that to go on to get certifications and better jobs so that she could work morning, noon and night to send me to the best schools in Jamaica and afford me opportunities to come to America to study and find my way to Nantucket,” she says. “I do everything thinking that I just want to make my mom proud. I know all the sacrifices she’s made to get me where I am, and I love calling her and telling her what I’m about to do next.”

MARY BERGMAN

"We’ve had female leadership on the island for two hundred years, that’s nothing new,” laughs Mary Bergman. “But I agree that we are having a defining moment right now.” As the executive director of the Nantucket Preservation Trust, Mary is in the business of, as she describes, “taking the best of the past into the future.” While her focus may be on the architectural identity of the island at the Trust, she is also one of the stewards of the island’s history and has unique insights, particularly around the topic of female leadership.


Citing the research of Jascin Leonardo Finger who wrote The Daring Daughters of Nantucket Island, Mary points to the fact that during the height of the whaling era women outnumbered men four to one, which effectively changed their roles from their contemporaries on the mainland, whether that was in commerce, education or real estate. “One thing I see in my work is women owning property in the 1800s without their husband’s name on the deed,” she says. “You have to remember that in the United States, women could not get a credit card without a cosigner until 1974.”


While celebrating her fellow female leaders on the island, Mary also highlights the men who helped propel her and others forward. In her case, the late Gene Mahon served as her chief champion, guiding her to new positions. “I wouldn’t have this job if it wasn’t for Gene.” She continues, “Men who make space for women and who want to lift up women’s voices are important. Yes, it’s great that women are in power on Nantucket, but we are half of the population and we’re not half of the leaders. Men who are in leadership positions who are willing to amplify women’s voices are really important and help break down the old boy’s clubs.”

ALICIA CARNEY

Alicia Carney had big shoes to fill when she took over for Joe Hale as executive director of the Dreamland two years ago. “It’s an interesting position as a woman to take over for somebody who is a seasoned executive, especially as this was my first executive role leading a multimillion-dollar nonprofit,” she reflects. “That was really intimidating at first as a young female executive. Knowing that the bar is set really high and knowing that the work we do at the Dreamland impacts everyone in this community...I was not about to let that ball drop with me.”


Not only did Alicia seamlessly take the helm, but she started steering the ship on a new course, first by shifting and redesigning each position at the Dreamland to play to the strengths of her small but mighty team, and then recruiting for additional talent. She also set out to nurture an open culture where her leadership could create other leaders. And she did it in her own unique style.


“One of the biggest challenges women face in leadership is being afraid to show vulnerability, but also knowing that that’s your greatest strength,” she says. “When we lean into that as women, we tend to encourage people to let their guard down enough to be seen and to lean into their own strengths and leadership style.”


Her approach proved the difference last summer when Alicia gave birth to her first child in the midst of the most demanding time of the year. “My team didn’t miss a beat,” Alicia says. “We had the busiest season the Dreamland has ever had and they executed the most incredible and engaging and amazing summer that we ever had as an organization.”

Alicia takes a dedicated approach to her professional development, reading volumes of books, taking courses and seminars, and collaborating with her fellow nonprofit leaders. “I’m always challenging myself to level up,” she says. “Especially as a young female executive—I’m in my mid-thirties—you can never be complacent, because if you’re stagnant, your team is...The Dreamland can’t afford to have somebody who is asleep at the wheel.” It’s safe to say, Alicia Carney is wide awake.

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