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What I didn’t know at the
time was that during our conversation Sewell was most likely
also preparing for a meeting with a district legislator,
juggling the schedules of her teenaged twin daughters,
brainstorming ideas for a board meeting at one of the many
local organizations where she volunteers, thinking about
edits for her book, preparing for a daily Facebook
connection with her group of girlfriends and taking on the
task of helping me.
This is Rhonda Sewell:
manager of External and Governmental Affairs at the Toledo
Lucas County Public Library, journalist, author, marketing
strategist, community advocate, mother, friend and gracious
giver.
In recognition for her
years of gracious giving, Sewell is this year’s recipient of
the YWCA of Northwest Ohio’s Milestones Award for
Volunteerism. She will receive her award on Thursday, March
30 during the association’s annual luncheon at the SeaGate
Center in a ceremony that will be filled, for Sewell, with
more than a touch of nostalgia and irony.
Sewell, in one of her many
stints as a volunteer with numerous organizations, served on
the board of the YWCA more than 20 years ago when the
Milestones Awards were conceived by her and the other board
members. The annual awards honor outstanding local women in
a range of seven categories.
Thus, Sewell’s passion for
volunteering has come full circle.
“My mom always tells me,
‘you must give back to the community that helped to raise
you.’ I took that to heart,” said Sewell, about the
proclivity she has for getting things done with openness and
generosity, which forms the foundation of everything that
she does.
“I looked around at what
my parents were doing,” Sewell said. They were active, and
they were involved in the church, with service organizations
in the community and in things that fought injustice.”
And in a short time,
Sewell has managed to accomplish much. Born in Bowling
Green, Ohio, she spent the first two years of her life
living in the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity house on the BGSU
campus where both her parents went to school and where her
father served as chapter president and her mom was den
mother.
“I was sort of a
baby/toddler and don’t remember much of it,” Sewell said.
“But the pictures are hilarious. I was sort of their mascot
with these ‘uncles’ who had these Greek letters and they’re
holding me.”
After college, the family
moved to Toledo when Sewell’s father, who earned his
master’s degree in public health, landed a job at the Toledo
Lucas County Health Department. Sewell attended St. Angela
Hall and St. Ursula Academy before her parents split and her
mother remarried.
Sewell and her mother
relocated to Michigan where she finished high school – but
not before she received recognition for being one of the 10
most outstanding students. “I wasn’t one of the most popular
students, I was just a doer,” she insisted.
Sewell would continue on a
trajectory of doing as she enrolled at Michigan State
University in Lansing. There Sewell worked on the school’s
independent college newspaper – The Michigan State News –
and reported for the Lansing State Journal. She says that
her early exposure with the written word helped shape her
career choice.
“I chose journalism
because I have always been a writer and a reader,” Sewell
said. “On the BG campus my parents would take me to see
James Baldwin, and read Nikki Giovanni to me. Books were
always around and doing the right thing was always the order
of the day.”
Sewell earned her
undergraduate degree in journalism then seized on an
opportunity to participate in a study abroad program that
took her to London. She eventually enrolled at the
University of London, and was in the process of taking
graduate courses in international journalism, when her life
was altered by an unforeseen encounter.
“My professor at the time
looked at me one day and said ‘what are you doing here? You
need to go write,’” said Sewell. “That professor changed my
life.”
That professor connected
her to the publisher of The Blade and at 21 years old,
Sewell was soon on a telephone interview that would lead to
an invitation for employment and an opportunity to tour
overseas for the newspaper.
“They sent me to the
Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Brussels, and Belgium,” she
said. “I was developing stories daily because I was getting
paid. Everything was paid. And I would call The Blade’s city
desk every day and say ‘I’m in Geneva and the Cyprus talks
are going on. I can get a press pass and cover the story.’
or ‘I’m in Milan do you want something on fashion? I’m in
Paris do you want something about the expatriates that have
moved here?’”
Sewell says she was always
met with the same response. “He just said ‘You can go if you
want to for the experience but I just want you to take a
tour.’”
Sewell said she found out
later that the publisher just wanted her to grow, and to
learn and become immersed in those experiences so that when
she came back to Toledo she would be a more developed
reporter.
Once she returned to the
states, Sewell finally got her chance to report. She would
work for The Blade for 18 years and, in between, she taught.
An invitation came from a BGSU professor who asked if she
would teach a journalism course at the university.
“They asked me to be an
adjunct professor and teach real world curriculum.” Sewell
said. And true to form, the “doer” asked if she could
develop her own class curriculum. “I know mass media and I
love black culture,” she remembered. “So I developed and
taught a course on the historical perspective of African
Americans and Mass Media.” Sewell would teach that course
for two years.
In 2006, Sewell says The
Blade union employees, which included her, had become
embroiled in heated contract negotiations. She says the
talks involved significant pay cuts and, once again, she was
urged to rethink her future.
“I thought I would only
work at The Blade for two years and then move on to USA
Today or The New York Times and that would be it,” said
Sewell.
But even with the
uncertainty of her job status, Sewell’s propensity for
philanthropy would lead her into the next assignment.
“I continued to be active
in the community,” said Sewell. “I came through the doors of
the library for a board meeting with the American Heart
Association when the library deputy director at the time and
the current marketing manager stopped me and said that their
media relations coordinator had just taken another job. I
looked at the salary, which was a little higher and I looked
at all of the headaches from the negotiations.” Sewell
applied for the position.
And she admits that even
though she had become comfortable in her position at The
Blade, it was time to move on.
But now it was no longer
reporting and journalism, but marketing and PR. “It’s what I
did naturally,” said Sewell. “This is what drives me. I’m a
people person.”
And 11 years later Sewell
has found herself in the place that she describes as her
dream position, as she works everyday doing exactly what she
loves.
“This position didn’t
exist before,” she said. “My director created this role for
me because he knew that I would stand on top of this desk
and wax poetic about the library.”
She says that her current
goal is to promote the library’s mission through a variety
of methods.
“This is an advocacy
role,” Sewell said. “Advocacy is mainly convincing
legislators, not only of what our offerings are, but
reminding them of what our core values are and what our
mission is because we place a lot of value in the community.
We have never had an advocacy role here. I’m pushing the
agenda for the library and part of advocacy is establishing
a relationship with people and telling them about our good
works.”
For Sewell this means
meeting regularly with political leaders who have the power
to fund library programs like its literacy initiative.
“We have to constantly
convince legislatures of our value,” Sewell said.
She says convincing
involves making monthly trips to Columbus in order to
establish and maintain relationships with elected officials
and keep the library’s agenda relevant. And she says she
makes it her business to know the agendas of those she needs
to influence.
“For Senator [Sherrod]
Brown, education is his interest. For [State Rep] Teresa
Fedor, it is human trafficking,” Sewell said. “[U.S.
Congresswoman] Marcy Kaptur’s new focus is early literacy,
so when she kicked off her early literacy reading tour –
about the importance of words in familie – I offered our
library as the place for her news conference.”
And in her spare time
Sewell is brainstorming ideas and creating programs through
her community endeavors. One of the programs that she is
proud of is the Real Men READ-y initiative – a public school
reading program that was established in 2012 through her
association with the United Way of Greater Toledo’s African
American Leadership Council’s Strategic Partnership
Committee.
“We had a specific focus
that year on black males,” Sewell said. “They weren’t
graduating like black females. And then there were the
obvious issues like police brutality, incarceration and
drugs. As I was thinking about how we could affect change I
thought, I work at a library, I’m into literacy, and my dad
had been a part of this reading program called ‘Real Men
Read’ in Chicago.”
Sewell said that the
Chicago reading program involved men from the community
going into schools and reading to kids. But she wanted to
modify the program to be more focused on black boys, and she
wanted the program to be regulated so that they could track
and measure its effectiveness.
“Black men aren’t missing
from the hood, but there are a lot of black male role models
who are missing,” Sewell explained. “So I wanted it to be
successful, but what we didn’t know was that there was going
to be a behavior change. These men are imparting wisdom and
it’s all from a book.”
Sewell says there are
currently 90 black men in the Toledo community who
consistently volunteer their time and attention three times
a week to participate in the program.
“We teach them the
Dialogic method of reading which is a participatory type of
reading,” Sewell said. “They read books that are relatable,
culturally relevant and sensitive to boys. The teachers
choose the most troubled kids and those who have the most
difficulty reading, and they say that this is often the most
consistent parts of these boy’s lives. These men are there.
One teacher describes it as ‘when they see those black men
coming to read to those babies it’s like a king walking
through the doors.’ Because real men our ready to take their
rightful place in our community. It’s a great program.”
Sewell says that the
program’s measurement analysis shows improvements in the
boys’ reading scores and an increase in their love of
reading.
“These boys may be
authors, senators, or TARTA bus drivers but this program
will make them better men,” she said. “And the men say that
these boys have changed their lives also.”
Sewell is happy about the
success of the reading program, but she’s not surprised by
it.
“I think that people know
what they’re going to get when I get on board,” she said.
“If I’m involved we’re going to create something. Something
is going to happen. If we aren’t making change happen, I’m
out. Otherwise why am I wearing the pin? What are we doing
here? We’re not just pin wearers, we’re doers. We should be
doing something to make the community a little better. I’m a
mission driven person, so I always go back to whatever the
mission is. This is how I roll. This is how I get down.”
Sewell says that the
substance of her fierce determination and commitment is
founded, in part, on an ancestral platform that existed
before her, but also on her strong faith.
Sewell has two cousins who
have made great strides in society. Ethel Lois Payne, a
civil rights activist and journalist, who worked for the
Chicago Defender in the 1950s, and Willa B. Brown, the first
woman and African American to get a commercial pilot’s
license in the U.S., and the subject of Sewell’s book.
“Every time I read stories
about the both of them, they were both fighting some kind of
injustice,” Sewell said. “They both had a justice bent and I
think that was passed along to me. And I learned a lot from
my mommy. She is my rock. We’re just a very strong
matriarchal family where women are at the pinnacle and the
rocks of the family. But although you achieve a lot because
of your talents, some of it you just can’t explain. Our
trajectory is paved by a lot of prayer. God orders those
steps. I often tell God I am so not worthy, but thank you. I
have to say that I live a blessed life, and I’ve led and
done some great things to effect change, but I was a servant
too.”
Sewell’s life will
transition again as her girls go off to college next year,
but she doesn’t plan on slowing down.
“My next project will
definitely be working with our girls and their self-esteem,”
she said. “I love this life thing, and I’m going to walk
this path and effect change. I don’t have to be rich, and I
don’t have to shine all the time. I like driving and
orchestrating from behind the scenes.”
Sewell wants to be
remembered as a servant, and a good friend, and as someone
who brings light into the room. And she hopes that those
attributes are passed along into the lives of her own
daughters. “I see the justice spirit in my girls but I also
see a kind spirit,” she said. “I tell them please be kind,
not to be walked over, but it’s what’s going to do so much
for you when you give of your heart. I hope that I’ve
instilled that in my daughters.”
For more information about
the Real Men READ-y program visit the website at
http://www.unitedwaytoledo.org/real-men-read-y |
