#ItWasNeverADress: A Conversation About Local Super Heroes

Join Tania Katan, the creator of #ItWasNeveraDress, as she leads a conversation with local leaders about super heroes in our community.

Katan, a Valley resident, turned social media attention away from celebrities and pet photos to get people thinking about female empowerment. Her medium is a near-universal symbol that Katan, the curator of code at Scottsdale-based technology company Axosoft, says needs re-interpreting:

It’s that figure on the doors of women’s restrooms, which Katan said to her was not a woman in a dress, but a woman in pants and a blue top wearing a red cape!

And so last winter #ItWasNeverADress was born. Her campaign for Axosoft became an Internet sensation, picked up by national news outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, Time magazine and Yahoo!

Katan notes that “#ItWasNeverADress is an invitation to shift perceptions and assumptions about women and the audacious, sensitive, and powerful gestures they make every single day. In science, technology, arts, mathematics, politics, houses of worship, on the streets, and in our homes, insightful women are often uninvited, overlooked, or just plain dismissed. Through storytelling, community building, innovation and creative disruptions, #ItWasNeverADress will foster necessary conversations, vital voices, and images from around the world that honor ALL women. When we see women differently… we see the world differently!”

Also participating in the panel:

Megan Finnerty, journalist, emcee and storytelling consultant. Essentially, she’s a professional listener, a reporter at The Arizona Republic and founder of the Arizona Storytellers Project. These nights blend the authenticity and hype-free discipline of storytelling as an art form with the truthfulness, community-building and empowerment that’s at the heart of great journalism. As a consultant, she works with individuals, businesses and community groups to find, hone and share their most important stories. She prefers a bold lip to a smoky eye.

 

Debbie Nez-Manuel, enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. She is executive director and co-founder of the Morning Star Leadership Foundation, having nearly 15 years of experience working directly within tribal communities. She holds a bachelor’s degree in social work and a master’s degree in social work at Arizona State University. Debbie continues to serve as a certified ASU social work field instructor and has trained hundreds of individuals in how to protect life through suicide prevention as a registered Livingworks trainer.

 

Christian Vera of RightThisMinute. She worked as a reporter and host for E! News Now and for KTLA-TV as a red-carpet correspondent at the Grammy Awards before joining RightThisMinute, the syndicated viral-videos TV program produced and recorded in Phoenix. Fluent in Spanish, she produced and hosted On the Up News for the Latin cable network NuvoTV (formerly Si TV) and appeared on shows for mun2, the cable network owned by NBC Universal and aimed at young Latinos.

 

Tania Katan is an award-winning author and performer who believes in storytelling at all costs. Katan has performed her stories at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, NPR Snap Judgment, CNN, Comedy Central Stage, TEDx, and more. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, Huffington Post, TIME, BuzzFeed, GLAMOUR, and others. Formerly a curator of performing arts at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Katan made the audacious leap into technology and is currently the curator of code at Axosoft, because every rock star company needs a punk!

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This event is presented by the Heard Museum.