The IWMF Howard G. Buffett fund grant has changed my life. It made my idea of a web app showcasing the male-to-female ratio of business leaders by company possible, and gave me the vote of confidence I needed to keep going as an entrepreneur and journalist. Before this, LedBetter was just a dream and a spreadsheet. Now, we have the resources to create a beautiful online tool that will hopefully educate thousands of people on gender equality and inequality at the brands they buy. The grant has helped me step up as a leader and take charge of creating something impactful.

My project Silent Evidence, is a collaborative multi-segment audio documentary on childhood sexual abuse. It’s a hybrid of first person narrative and investigative journalism. I wanted to take a polyvalent approach — examining the political, cultural, psychological factors shaping how we confront this issue. As a survivor I live this issue at the intersections of those forces. It’s an emotional conundrum as well as a policy conundrum for me every single day. It felt critical to take a holistic approach to the story — one that could interweave an examination of cultural norms, the media, prosecutorial discretion, the impact of trauma on logic, etc. Finding a way to render these intersecting forces was about a quest to tell this story in the most truthful and engaging way possible.The grant from the IWMF allowed me to take time to capture those moments, to do in depth research, and to collaborate with two unique partners…This grant made pulling all the pieces together possible. It was healing and hopefully to be able to work in a way that honored my experience as a survivor and my multi-platform approach to media distribution.