The 4th Annual Shero Awards

The Shero Awards, now in its fourth year, is an annual celebration that honors remarkable women for their outstanding accomplishments and advocacy for women’s rights throughout their community and beyond. In years past, we have recognized Sheros WA State House Representative Tina Orwall, Sage Ke’alohilani Quiamno, the co-founder of Future for Us, Senator Rosa Franklin, Chief Research Officer for the Seattle Indian Health Board Abigail Echo-Hawk and Sarah Weddington, the litigator who won the landmark case Roe vs. Wade.

This year, we are thrilled to honor:

• Ijeoma Oluo – New York Times best-selling author and activist

• Jeri Moomaw – Founder and executive director of Innovations Human Trafficking Collaborative (IHTC)

• Dr. Helen Chu – Seattle Flu Study Director who is credited with identifying the first community transmission of the coronavirus in the U.S.

This year’s awards celebration will premiere live on Zoom at 7pm, December 1st. This new interactive format for the 4th Annual Shero Awards extends the event to a wide audience while heeding to COVID-19 safety precautions. Although we are not able to come together in person, we are greatly looking forward to celebrating these extraordinary women.

About Ijeoma Oluo

Ijeoma Oluo is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race and the forthcoming Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. Her work on race has been featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post, among many others. She has twice been named to the Root 100, and she received the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award and the 2020 Harvard Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

About Jeri Moomaw

Jeri Moomaw is the founder and executive director of Innovations Human Trafficking Collaborative (IHTC) based in Olympia Washington. In 2016 she was awarded by Department of Justice for her work to improve the lives of trafficking survivors. For the past 16 years she has worked in Tribal communities and beyond with trafficking survivors, developing and overseeing prevention and intervention programs, creating curriculum and training modules focusing on combating commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, and gender-based violence. As someone who has been personally impacted by trafficking, she also knows first-hand the individual and collective toll it can take. Thus, she has made it her mission to assist survivors on their healing journey, bring awareness, education and provide tools to equip communities and front-line professionals to be able to recognize and respond to trafficking and violence.

Jeri is solution focused and works with communities, agencies and organization to identifying service gaps, enhance opportunities to identify victims, and to improve screening and response protocols in a trauma informed and culturally appropriate manner.

Jeri is a consultant for Department of Homeland Security Blue Campaign and a member of Office of Victim of Crime and Office on Trafficking in persons (NHTTAC) consultant network as a human trafficking subject matter expert.

About Dr. Helen Chu

Dr. Chu’s research is focused on preventive interventions against influenza, RSV and emerging respiratory viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Chu conducts clinical-translational research on large-scale community-based studies of respiratory viruses, with a focus on vaccines, antivirals, and diagnostics. She is also interested in defining clinical and immune correlates of protection against respiratory viruses and describing mechanisms of maternal-fetal immunity against respiratory viruses.

Dr. Chu is a Multiple Principal Investigator of the Seattle Flu Study, which first identified COVID-19 community transmission in the United States, Co-Investigator on the University of Washington Vaccine Trials and Evaluation Unit (VTEU), and Site Principal Investigator for the ACTT-1 trial, which evaluated Remdesivir for the treatment of COVID-19. Over the last four months, Dr. Chu’s lab has enrolled a prospective observational cohort of 300 COVID-19 inpatients and outpatients to study immune responses over time.

Her previous work includes describing transmission patterns of RSV, rhinovirus, and human metapneumovirus, the epidemiology and adverse birth outcomes associated with respiratory viral pneumonia in pregnant women, and the kinetics of transplacental RSV antibody transfer and decay in infants. Dr. Chu has also performed clinical trials of vaccine candidates in both domestic and international sites, including Nepal and Bangladesh.

Thank you to our Sponsors!

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Zylberschtein’s Delicatessen & Bakery

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