Suzanne Ondrus, Ph.D.
Gender and Women’s Empowerment Consultant
suzanne.ondrus@gmail.com
Cell (and WhatsApp): 440-561-7772
Training and Consultations Offered:
Assessing your needs, Suzanne creates learning workshops that speak to your challenges, providing comfort, knowledge and empowerment in this often confusing and quickly evolving world.
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion: How do you move your organization past recruiting for diversity to maintaining diversity? Do you have a high turnover of minorities? You might need to work on your company’s DEI culture. Learn why DEI is good for profits and for social justice. Learn how to “do” DEI from a personal to departmental approach. DEI also includes gaining awareness of your company culture. Just as we study foreign cultures, each organization has its own set of behaviors and atmosphere. The first step for change is to know where you are.
Gender Mainstreaming: This training predominately bolsters inclusion of female needs, perspectives, and contributions. For example, a review of your company’s marketing material may reveal mainly photos of men, giving the message of prioritizing men. Perhaps your job ads use male language that deters qualified female applicants. Gender mainstreaming also can be used to apply a gendered lens to problems that may not at first glance seem to be gendered problems.
Harassment: This training focuses on sexual harassment, but it branches out to discuss various ways people are bullied. It provides strategies to identify harassment and stop it immediately. The first step is to educate your staff in what constitutes harassment. The costs of replacing employees are high, so working to create a safe and supportive atmosphere is worth your time.
Learning Sexuality Diversity: Confused about LGBTQI+? Not sure what the terms are or how to engage with people with different sexual and gender orientations? Why and how does someone go from being straight and in a heterosexual marriage with children to changing his/her/their sexual or gender identity? Knowledge is the first step.
Sexual Empowerment: Building on sexual harassment training, these sessions provide new vocabulary and a new vision to how we see assault and consensual sexual relationships. This program educates participants on peer, social, and societal pressure regarding sex. It empowers them to think about and articulate their comfort levels regarding intimacy and sexual engagement. The goal is for participants to gain awareness and self-confidence regarding what they want or what they do not want in sexual contact and intimacy. Realizing that consciousness is essential for agency, participants will think, write, and speak their individual policies and plans regarding physical and emotional intimacy.
Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment: A variety of women’s and girls’ empowerment services range from professional development talks, introspective personal writing workshops, and facilitation of discussion forums on such topics as networking, sexual harassment, cross-cultural shock, and applying to college or graduate school.