Looking Back, Looking Ahead

As we welcome the new year, we want to take a moment to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve shared with all of you during this significant year that has included the launch of our Bader+Simon Empowerment Grant and continued progress of construction on our building. Your support of listening to B+S with Friends, subscribing to our newsletters, and spreading the word about our mission and work has provided a foundation of support. It continues to keep us motivated for the next steps.

As we prepare to welcome 2025, our team has shared some highlights of this year and hopes for what’s to come.

Asia, Online Communication Director:

“This year was truly transformative for me. I welcomed my second child, a baby girl named Leeloo, inspired by my favorite heroine from The Fifth Element. Becoming a mom again has brought so much joy and perspective. I also started working as the Resource Coordinator at Gamble Montessori Elementary, a role that deeply fulfills me. I love building community, bringing people together, and connecting them with resources that make a meaningful difference in their lives.

As I look ahead to 2025, I hope to slow down and reconnect with what truly matters. I want to spend more time in nature, exploring the outdoors with my family, and hopefully take my son Damian to see whales in the ocean—a dream of ours. I’d love to immerse myself in creative projects, whether it’s gardening, painting, styling, making music, or capturing moments through photography.

Another aspiration for the year is to take steps toward starting my nonprofit. I envision creating community foraging gardens filled with herbs, vegetables, and flowers—spaces where people can come together, grow food, and share in the beauty of nature. My ultimate hope for 2025 is for a life filled with community, love, peace, and creativity.
[artwork: Anita Groener]

Sara, Board Director:
”I’m appearing on PBS Craft In America Collectors edition on Dec 27. Excited to highlight emerging local women artists.
In early 2025 we are doing a bucket list trip with friends to New Zealand.

[artwork: Heather Jones]

Anu, Board Director:
2024 began with my firm resolve to continue with my blogging—Mywanderingsintheworld.com.

I had begun it in late 2023, a few months into my retirement. I needed to find a calculus for my days, separate from watching the world go by, merrily or otherwise. Putting my feelings down with specificity made sense to me as I moved through my world. I traveled through Chile and Antarctica, Milan and Turn, Maui and Kauai, New York and Cincinnati, Highland Beach in Florida and the surrounding environs like Miami and Sarasota.

In late fall, we went to a wedding in the Athens Riviera and then to India—Kolkata, New Delhi (again, for a mega wedding), and the soulful backwaters of Kerala. I ended the year in Patagonia, a place that made me fall in love again—not only with landscape but how we humans are constantly turning to nature to rediscover our selves and our wayward complexities. 

I also moved from temporary housing to our condo in East Walnut Hills. The remodeling was complete—we were home again, the kitchen fully stocked, the art on the walls. 

Our dearly beloved son also got married this year—in August, in a traditional blessing ceremony and in December, also in a traditional manner with an officiant competently doing her job. The newly-minted couple looked relieved that the elaborate festivities were behind them; right away, they took off for Zanzibar, to the remotest place on the map where they could imagine.

This year, I am grateful for all the good-hearted, sensible, imaginative, creative souls that I have met, for leaders calling for a ceasefire or those being ousted because they have carried it too far, and for the minuscule strides that we make toward a better world, a healthier body, a sustainable climate. I am grateful for artists who come in all shapes and sizes, for losing myself in a good book or film, yet mostly, I am grateful that I can lose myself in a museum, thinking of how people suffered in the past, just like we do in our present time.

I am mostly grateful for the love that I feel for all humanity, and especially, my friends and family. I find myself still capable of a good cry. Gisele Pelicot draws tears to my eyes just as other innocents all over the world do. May we all find our singular peace in the time to come...

[artwork: Ana Teresa Fernandez]

Panella, Board Director:
2024 has been a year of adventure and reflection. I was able to take a sabbatical from teaching which allowed me to travel through South America and other parts of the US and Ireland. However, my time in Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru changed the way I think about my local and global connections. Volunteering in Buenos Aires at a school and community hub for trans people, witnessing a glacier slowly crumble, and leaving a country as a military coup took hold are experiences that I think about daily. Returning to the US and the results of the Presidential election have reminded me of the strength and necessity of community building. I worked at an election site this year and registered new voters eager to build and participate in a democracy that reflects them, and it is clear we will need them to continue that work.  As I look to 2025, I am eager to get back to the classroom and work my students.  I am inspired by the artists and activists who are continuing to create new beautiful worlds that challenge and inspire us. 

[artist: Micah Bazant]

Tamara, Founder and Board President:
This year held, as many do, an array of emotions, starting with heartache over the loss of our architect and dear friend, Terry Boling. Terry was a part of the Bader+Simon team from the beginning, overseeing the design and planning for our physical space in Cincinnati. We have been blessed by Jose Garcia taking the helm and carrying out Terry’s plan.

I had the joy of seeing my daughter graduate from college, having my book published, and receiving an opportunity to work with CalStateLA to create the Bader+Simon Engaged Futures Internship. I am heading to Los Angeles in January to co-teach a course at the California Institute for Women in Chino this spring semester to provide the women with an internship opportunity to assist with their reentry. I am excited by the progress of construction on our building and our future programming, and look forward to seeing you in Cincinnati for our grand opening in the fall of 2025. Much work lies before us, and I believe that collectively, we can be the change we wish to see in the world.

Thank you for being part of this journey—here’s to an inspiring and thought-provoking year ahead!