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Good morning, Fearless readers:
We hope you had a wonderful and safe Fourth of July weekend.
Have you purchased your tickets for our 2025 Women of Influence event yet? We are honoring 10 incredible women making an impact in Central Iowa. You don't want to miss this event! Purchase your tickets
here.
In this week’s Fearless e-newsletter, you will find:
- A recap of our Fearless Focus on women's health care.
- An essay about trying new things from guest writer Saundra Longhenry.
- In the headlines: Willkie House announced Weslyn Caldwell as its new executive director.
- In case you missed it:
Abby Delaney shares her unique hobby.
- Lots more!
— Macey Shofroth, Fearless editor
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Fearless Focus recap: Five takeaways on barriers to health care for women
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| BY MACEY SHOFROTH, FEARLESS EDITOR
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Health greatly affects how women are able to show up in both work and life. When women in Iowa face barriers to receiving the health care they need, they struggle to thrive in many other aspects of their lives.
The Fearless team held our second Fearless Focus of the year on June 19, focusing on the barriers to health care women face in Iowa and how we can solve them.
The speakers included:
Dr. Wanakee Carr, obstetrician-gynecologist, the Iowa Clinic
Tara
Geddes, chief nursing officer, Floyd Valley Healthcare
Nichole Nidey, assistant professor, Department of Epidemiology, University of Iowa College of Public Health
Christina Schark, executive director, Southern Iowa Mental Health Center
Here are five takeaways from the event. You can watch the full event at fearlessbr.com/past-events.
Iowa ranks last in the U.S. for the number of OB-GYN doctors per capita
Because there are a number of compounding factors making recruitment of obstetrician-gynecologists more difficult, the issue is only getting worse.
In 2024, the state of Iowa enacted one of the most restrictive
abortion bans in the country, causing some medical doctors to choose more friendly states in which to practice.
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“If you’re someone who plans to provide abortion care, you’re not going to want to come to Iowa to practice. You’re going to choose someplace more friendly to practice where you know you can provide that care if it’s needed,” Carr said. “If you’re not from Iowa, if this state is not friendly to practicing medicine without politics involved, people are going to be less likely to come.”
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Nidey echoed that students and trainees are also choosing to study elsewhere due to Iowa’s reproductive laws.
“If we can get trainees to come here to our programs, we can hopefully be more likely to keep them here in the state of Iowa,” she said. “But if our training programs are not able to provide educational experiences for all aspects of maternal care, it’s going to be really hard for us to get those really good trainees into our state and then to later stay.”
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Geddes said that patient volume and finances make it difficult to recruit OB-GYN providers in rural communities. It leaves them with fewer providers trained to manage more complex health issues for women.
“Our family practice doctors will do the OB care for our low-risk patients here, but that doesn’t mean that those high-risk patients aren’t showing up in our ERs. We have to make sure staff are prepared for those emergencies that come up that we don’t see on a regular basis,” she said.
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Expanding options for who can provide care is important
Schark explained that while the mental health field has always struggled with maintaining its workforce, Iowa has expanded who can provide care, leading to more patients getting the help they need. Community-based workers are able to address immediate crises.
“When I first started in mental health back in 2001, it really was just the licensed therapist that did the bulk of the treatment. In the last 20 years or so, we’ve gotten a lot more creative about the ways we can use different types of staff,” she said. “For example, now we employ
quite a few community case managers who go to a person’s house. Sometimes, we get really almost the same results as you would if a person did see a therapist.”
Schark also pointed to Iowa’s mobile crisis team as an option that could help more women.
“To dispatch the mobile crisis team, anyone can dial 988 to reach the mobile crisis provider for your county,” she said. “What has happened is women who feel like they can’t leave because they’re caretakers, they cannot come to our crisis unit. This has really helped with some of those barriers for women especially who feel like they can’t leave their families.”
Rural communities have less access to health care than metro areas
Over 40 maternal centers in Iowa have closed over the last two decades, many of them in rural communities. Geddes explained that many people have to travel farther than before to get
the health care they need, especially specialty and maternal care.
“We were recognizing that there were a lot of closures in neighboring counties, and we were at a point where we were losing some of our [patient] volume in OB,” Geddes said. “When you start losing volume, it’s hard to recruit physicians and be able to keep those competencies and skills and be able to do that in a safe manner. It’s also hard to recruit nursing staff into that.”
In 2024, Floyd Valley Healthcare invested in expanding its birthing unit to help defy the trend. Geddes said it’s also a long-term investment as women are often the primary decision-makers in families and if they have quality maternal care they’re more likely to continue their family’s care with that health care entity.
Carr said struggling revenue and retaining senior leaders is also making it difficult to get young doctors into rural communities. When providers are more sparse in
rural areas, those practicing often experience burnout.
“They’re caring for so many patients that they can’t keep going at that rate,” Carr said. “So they choose to leave the state or move to a more metro area where they have more support or they’re taking less calls or where they don’t have to see an overwhelming number of patients in a day.”
Women tend to neglect their mental health for the sake of their families
Women tend to be the household managers for the rest of their family, which can often lead to them neglecting their own care.
The stigma around mental health can often make it seem less important of an issue to disrupt the family dynamic over, Schark said.
“We are the caretakers for everybody in our family,” Schark said. “I’m the one that makes sure even the dog gets to where they need to be. So if we’re the ones that are feeling
weak or sad or depressed, sometimes there’s just not time in the day for women to take care of themselves.”
She encouraged women to provide themselves the same care they would expect for their loved ones.
It’s more difficult for some groups of women to access quality health care
Nidey leads the Empower Project at the University of Iowa, which is a patient-centered collaborative of over 20 pregnant women with substance-use disorders. Her work studies how these women are able to access care in Iowa.
“In a recent study, my team called every licensed substance use treatment center in the state of Iowa, and when we called these centers, nearly half of them never answered the phone. So imagine if you called 911, and nobody picked up half the time,” Nidey said.
Carr also spoke about the disproportionate maternal mortality rate for women of color in Iowa, which is
higher than the national rate. Black women are six times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Medicaid cuts expand the issue.
“If you don’t have insurance, you’re less likely to seek care,” Carr said. “People don’t realize 40% of birthing women in the state use Medicaid.”
It’s difficult for women with substance abuse issues to get pregnancy care, as well, explained Nidey. Providers often don’t understand substance use and what medications are safe to use during pregnancy. Stigma makes it even worse.
“A recent study that our team did found women who reported stigma and discrimination during their prenatal care and their substance abuse treatment were two to three times more likely to disengage from their substance use treatment and two to three times more likely to return to use and overdose in the first six months postpartum,” Nidey said.
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Essay: Lifting yourself up to do the ‘scary thing’
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 I picked up a barbell for the first time at the age of 35 and I was hooked. There is a feeling of power that comes from picking up the barbell. I enjoy lifting; to be successful I have to clear my head of self-doubt and negativity. You must think about your breathing, bracing your core, where your hands are, where your feet are. I not only gain confidence from lifting, I gain clarity. I get to shut the world out for an hour or two each time. I get to spend time with myself, improving myself, filling my own cup and ensuring that as I age, I maintain
my muscle mass to keep me healthy and mobile.
I set an intention at the beginning of 2024 to focus. Focus on what made me happy, focus on what made me feel good, focus on those who fill my cup. At the beginning of 2025 I selected “fearless” as my word and intention for the year. I am going to make fearless choices; I am going to do things that scare me. I am living fearless. That is not the absence of fear; for me it is using fear to accomplish new goals. Harnessing that feeling and asking it why it is there. So naturally when an offhand comment led me to signing up for the Women’s Barbell Classic last August, I said no. Then I thought about it and said why not, and I changed my answer to yes. I signed up and I panicked. I don’t like to be center stage.
I am a behind-the-scenes kind of gal. I’m more likely to be the director than the star. I fretted about it for close to six months while I trained, telling very few people, leaving room to withdraw and give someone else the chance to compete if I wanted to.
The Women’s Barbell Classic started seven years ago. I heard about it over the years and thought maybe one day. Then I got older and one day seemed unlikely. I’m so glad I said yes at 47. What a powerful environment to step outside my comfort zone!
The week of the meet it hit me with equal parts excitement for the adventure and dread for realizing I was going to stand on a stage in front of a bunch of strangers and lift. This is so out of my comfort zone. I read
the rules, I figured out my opening weights, I went to the official weigh-in to determine flights.
The night before I was a little scared, a little excited, a lot overwhelmed. I knew I could do this, I was going to do this, and it was going to be OK. I woke up on March 22 and I was excited, no turning back now. The Women’s Barbell Classic is unlike any other sporting event I have ever attended. I walked in on Saturday morning to a party. The music, the lights, the dancing and the women welcoming each other. What a cool experience! The ages ranged from 8 to 70 for the lifters. I saw women my mom’s age showing up and showing out! Heck, yes!
It was so loud I couldn’t hear myself think. The scaries hit, and I thought, this is overwhelming, I don’t know if I can do this.
There were nine flights, and I was in the last one. As I waited my anxieties grew. What if? And then it was time. There was so much adrenaline
pumping through my body, I felt like I might burst into tears. I had picked a weight I knew I could do; I wanted a “gimme” for that first lift. I went out there, I didn’t look at the crowd or my family sitting in the stands. I walked straight to the bench, got settled and did it. I did it! I felt relieved. I gave them my next weight – I hit that one.
Feeling the excitement build, I went big for my last lift and as we waited my turn my coach and I talked it through. It’s OK if I don’t make it, I thought, I already hit two, this one is much bigger and I have only done it one other time. I went out there, praying I would be able to hit the lift. My foot slid off the floor and I got a red card, but I kept going and finished the lift. I was pumped – I had failed a lift, and I was pumped!
I did it, I put myself out there and succeeded. I felt my confidence grow. I was bursting with pride! Deadlift was later in the day, and the waiting started over. I nailed all three of my lifts. My team was excited for me, my friends and family were excited, but the best part was the feeling. I had accomplished my scary thing! I can’t wait for the 2026 event.
A piece of advice: Try your own scary thing. Here are tips for doing just that:
- Find a friend to tackle it with.
- Ask questions, research the activity (or job, trip, committee).
- Dig deep and figure out why it seems so scary or uncomfortable.
- Find your grit.
- Have fun!
Trying scary things can often be the most rewarding experiences even if they go poorly. I’m always proud that I stepped out of my comfort zone even when I would not repeat the experience. You don’t know what you’re made of until you push those boundaries. One of my favorite quotes that I lean on in times of uncertainty is from O.R. Melling: “When you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe one of two things: There will be
ground to stand. Or you will grow wings to fly.”
Saundra Longhenry lives in Nevada with her husband, Jeremy, and their two German Shepherds, Duke and Aggie. She is the marketing and sales coordinator at Keen Project Solutions LLC in Ankeny.
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“TRUE ABUNDANCE ISN’T BASED ON OUR NET WORTH. IT’S BASED ON OUR SELF-WORTH. ”
GABRIELLE BERNSTEIN
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Willkie House announces new executive director. Willkie House, a Des Moines nonprofit that supports families and youths with after-school programming, has appointed Weslyn Caldwell as its new executive director. She succeeds Alex Rice, who recently became executive director of the Iowa Nonprofit Alliance. Caldwell joins Willkie House with over 15 years of experience in nonprofit leadership, strategic planning and community engagement. Willkie House has been a vital part of Des Moines’ Black community since its founding in 1917 when it hosted the War Recreation Board’s leisure programs for Black servicemen, a news release said. Today, approximately 90% of the youths served at Willkie House are students of color.
CultureALL announces leadership transition. CultureALL, a nonprofit that offers multicultural programming and consulting, announced that founder Sherry Gupta stepped down as executive director July 1. Jessie Orton, who has served as CultureALL's director of operations since 2019, will succeed Gupta as executive director. Gupta will continue working with CultureALL's staff and board, according to the announcement.
Cedar Falls native joins UNI as new College of Humanities, Arts & Sciences dean. The University of Northern Iowa announced Mary Black will serve as the next dean of the College of Humanities. Black is a native of Cedar Falls and first took college classes at the university. She
recently served as provost at Millikin University in Decatur, Ill. She began her duties July 1. “It is a pleasure to be coming back home to Cedar Falls. I’m eager to get to work and build on the strong foundation already in place at UNI. The warm welcome I’ve received has been incredible, and I look forward to collaborating closely with outstanding faculty, staff, and administration both in the College of Humanities, Arts, & Sciences and across the university,"she said in a release.
Kinna’s House Of Love to open overnight shelter for women in the Quad Cities. A new safe house for women who have survived abuse will open in Davenport at the end of July. Kinna's House of Love, founded by Leukinna Hodges, is a four bedroom, two bathroom house with 13 beds for women without children escaping abuse. Residents will have access to counseling, office space, a reading room, group sessions and crafts.
Hodges plans to bring in volunteers to give makeovers, teach an etiquette class and provide cooking lessons. Hodges decided she would someday open a safe house when she was 12 years old and experienced abuse herself for the first time, she told the Quad-City Times.
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Her scientific breakthrough could end morning sickness (Vox). More states are tracking rape kits. But key support for survivors may be slipping away (Stateline). Colleen Mullen Conrad credits Iowa novelist for inspiring rural town's revival (Des Moines Register). Coralville’s Xtream Arena to host first NCAA women’s wrestling championships in 2026 (Cedar Rapids Gazette). Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down 1849 abortion ban (New York Times). Three years after Roe fell, more women are managing their abortions without doctors (NPR).
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How Abby Delaney finds flow and fun outside of work
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| COMPILED BY EMILY BARSKE WOOD, SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR
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For several years, the Business Record has published a Photo Issue in the summer that highlights the interesting pastimes of leaders. This year the leaders and the hobbies included are as unique as ever.
Abby Delaney, senior vice president of marketing and communications for Bankers Trust, shared with us how she honors her heritage with a unique artform. She told us a little about her hobby and also how the lessons she learns from it apply to her professional role.
Tell us a little about your hobby.
Each spring I enjoy creating Ukrainian Easter eggs, known as pysanky. This 2,000-year-old artform involves hand-decorating eggs using a batik method of writing designs on the egg with beeswax and progressively dying the egg from lightest colors to darkest. Once the
design has been completed, the egg is emptied, the wax is removed and the egg can be sealed with a protective coating, allowing it to be kept long term. They’re traditionally displayed around the home or given as gifts, both of which I love to do.
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When did this hobby start for
you?
My mother is 100% Ukrainian, and this tradition has been part of our family for generations. I think I was 8 or 9 when I made my first egg and would make them sporadically over the years if my mom was working on hers. In 2016 I got back into making eggs each spring and have loved connecting with my heritage in this way, challenging myself with new designs and helping my kids try it out too. My 4-year-old made his first egg this year, which was so special for me.
What’s something this hobby provides you that applies to your job?
More than anything, this hobby reminds me to stay flexible. I almost always start with a vision in mind for the design or colors I’ll use. But a misdrawn line, wonky dye or suggestion from an observer may lead me down a new path. Some of my favorite eggs are the ones where
those changes mid-process led to a better result than I originally planned.
The same can be true for projects, solutions or strategies at work. Your first idea may be good, but often when you take time to build on it – whether through collaboration, finding data or soliciting feedback – the better it becomes.
Tell us a tip or fun fact about your hobby.
Pysanky can be made from eggs of all sizes, from tiny hummingbird eggs to large ostrich eggs, and different symbols used in egg designs have traditionally been associated with certain meanings. For example, a deer symbolizes wealth or prosperity, a tree symbolizes growth and flowers symbolize wisdom.
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At its core, Fearless exists to help empower Iowa women to succeed in work and life. We believe that everyone has a story to share and that we cannot progress as a society unless we know about one another. We share stories through featuring women in our reporting, featuring guest contributions and speakers at our events.
We are always looking for new stories to share and people to feature. Get in touch with us!
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