Regional Youth Summit on Gender Equity

The Rhode Island Historical Society is excited to announce its participation in the National Youth Summit on Gender Equity, an online outreach program organized by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in partnership with Smithsonian Affiliations, from September 21 through October 12 for middle and high school students.

The Rhode Island Historical Society’s regional program will include a local panel of experts from RIOT RI (formerly Girls Rock! Rhode Island), Youth Pride, Inc., and Girl Scouts of Southeastern New England and will enable young people from across Rhode Island to participate in the conversation via a live virtual program on Tuesday, September 28 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.  Regional participants will also have access to an online challenge linking to additional Rhode Island Historical Society and Smithsonian Youth Summit programs, materials, and historical resources.  Participants who cannot attend the live regional program are still invited to participate in the online challenge.

The Summit will explore gender equity and gender bias through the lenses of sports, politics, fashion, music, and identity and examine ways this is complicated by race, ethnicity, and class. Guided by history, the Summit will provide a platform for teens nationwide to grapple with the enduring question ‘what will the future of gender equity look like?’

Teachers and students who wish to participate register for this regional program by using this form here.  More information will be sent to registrants.  This program is for middle and high school.

Our local panelists:

Youth Pride, Inc.
Andy Taubman, LCSW, Director of Youth Service
She/Her/They/Them

Andy graduated is a Licenses Clinical Social Worker with a Masters in Social Work (MSW) from Rhode College in the Spring of 2019. They have worked in nonprofits for 20+ years and have a particular love and interest in working with youth, especially being around their energy and being part of the process of helping them navigate adolescence and young adulthood. YPI is particularly appealing to Andy as a queer person who loves the opportunity to work directly with the youngest members of the LGBTQ+ community.

In their free time, Andy performs as a drag king performer, producer, mentor, workshop maker and event manager and community builder. They enjoy hiking with their dog (the world’s prettiest Soi (street) dog that they rescued in Thailand named Saku!), working out, traveling and exploring new places, and flopping on a couch and binge watching TV shows.

Girl Scouts of Southeastern New England
Pamela J. Hyland, CEO
She/Her

Pam is the CEO of Girl Scouts of Southeastern New England – a council serving all of Rhode Island, a small region in southern Massachusetts and one community in Connecticut.

Before coming to Rhode Island, Pam served as the first CEO for Girl Scouts of NYPENN Pathways – a council resulting from the merger of five legacy councils that merged on July, 8, 2009.  Prior to that Pam completed an 18-month transitional leadership contract with the Girl Scouts of South Carolina – Mountains to Midlands, Inc. where she, as the former CEO of the Girl Scout Council of the Congaree Area, Inc., worked in partnership with the former CEOs of two other Girl Scout councils.  In April of 2007, these three councils merged and were among the first ten groupings of councils to merge under the nationwide jurisdictional realignment of Girl Scout councils.

Prior to her nine years with the Girl Scouts in South Carolina, Pam served as the executive director of USA Girl Scouts Overseas for three years in Japan where she managed the Girl Scout operation on 14 military installations in mainland Japan, Okinawa and Korea. Her other Girl Scouting experience includes tenure at councils in the Schenectady New York area and in Virginia.

Pam is most proud of four initiatives that occurred during her tenure with Girl Scouting – the creation of a very successful Camp CEO program; an Image Campaign that featured 16 prominent women through the tagline – “believe in a girl – Be A Woman Who Supports Girl Scouts;”  the adoption of the nationally recognized and widely lauded Carver Policy Governance Model that enables strategic leadership by governance boards and maximizes staff productivity and performance;  and the involvement of Girl Scouts in the Kepner-Tregoe decision-analysis process that resulted in girls determining the issues around which their annual community service projects were planned.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in recreation from the University of Northern Colorado and a master’s degree in adult education from Virginia Tech University.

Originally from Torrington, Conn., Pam enjoys walking, hiking, cross-country skiing, and attending theatrical productions.

RIOT RI  (formerly Girls Rock! RI)
Rikki Davis, Co-executive Director
They/Them 

Rikki Davis (they/them) is an arts administrator, musician and activist from Providence, RI. They started working at RIOT RI (fka Girls Rock! RI) in 2018, and currently hold the role of co-executive director at the organization. Previously, they held the Program Director position at Pawtucket’s Slater Mill museum, cementing their deep interest in critical history. Rikki has been published in a number of peer reviewed journals, most recently as a co-author of “Public History and Collective Transformation: A Case Study of Un/Learning the State” in History: the Journal of the Historical Association, one of Britain’s leading peer-reviewed history journals.  Rikki is passionate about disrupting hierarchies, promoting community care, demystifying music making, and giving young people the tools they need to thrive. When it’s not a literal pandemic, Rikki is a skater with Providence Roller Derby under the alter ego, RetroRocket.