We invited the 2025 Betty Award winners to a roundtable conversation with Milwaukee Magazine’s editor-in-chief and publisher, Carole Nicksin, to discuss what fuels their contributions and what it’s like to be a woman leader in Milwaukee today.
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The 2025 Bettys are:
Linda Edelstein, Arts Advocate, CEO of the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra
Ellen Friebert Schupper, Standout Sister, executive director of After Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Laura Gutiérrez, Bridge Builder, CEO of the United Community Center
Bridget Whitaker, Tenacious B, executive director of Safe & Sound
Peggy Williams-Smith, Groundbreaker, CEO of Visit Milwaukee
(Linda Mellowes, Quadracci Family Award, could not join the roundtable.)
Carole Nicksin: Welcome, all! Let’s start with the namesake of this honor. Did any of you know Betty?
Williams-Smith: I met her while working at the Pfister. I was on the board of Milwaukee Women Inc., which she founded. When she started the organization, women represented [9.3%] of board seats in the top 50 companies. By the time I left, we were nearly at 30% of board seats.
Nicksin: I never got to meet her. Living here these past nine years, I feel she is part of the reason we have so many talented and accomplished women in this community. When selecting the Bettys, we consider how each recipient serves the community. I’m curious what sparked that impulse in each of you.
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Williams-Smith: I worked for Marcus Hotels for 22 years. They were always giving back in some way, and I enjoyed watching that. So the moment I was more established in my career and was able to give back, I started to do so.
In this job, it’s incredibly important to have a strong community. If you don’t have one, you can’t sell it. It has to be genuine. Working at Marcus, I required everyone who worked for me to be part of the community, whether coaching their kids’ team or being on a board. At Visit Milwaukee, we try to make sure everyone is involved in their community, too.
Whitaker: I was born and raised in Milwaukee. I’ve never lived anywhere else. We see a lot of negative things on the news, but as a kid, I experienced so much belonging in my own community. I want to help others feel the same way where they live. Building a strong community for my own kids was also part of it. As my kids moved out of the house, I wanted them to stay in Milwaukee.
Edelstein: Community was always part of my experience as a musician. When I worked at the United Performing Arts Fund, I had an opportunity to see from a bigger lens how the arts made a difference in the larger community and brought people together. At [Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra], I get to help the students see how people from every walk of life can come together through music.
Friebert Schupper: Community is the heart of our organization. We create community for people with cancer, caregivers or previvors, people with a high risk for developing breast cancer. Connections are an important part of it. [ABCD] is rooted in Milwaukee, but because we’re a virtual organization, we always expand our community by making connections beyond Wisconsin.
Gutiérrez: For me, community has always been making sure others are connected to resources they don’t have. Growing up, I got to translate for my parents and help them navigate health care and education. Now, working at [United Community Center], I do the same for others.
Williams-Smith: I get to travel to other places for work, and other places don’t have the same community. After a recent Packers game, people were posting on social media about how kind everyone was, even to the rival team. That’s what you get when you come to Milwaukee, too.
Nicksin: How does that sense of community resonate in terms of your own career? Do you find there’s extra support among other women to help you accomplish what you want to do here?
Edelstein: There is such a wonderful network of women leaders in the community. If I ever had a question through the course of my career, there was always a woman I could reach out to and ask for their advice. TEMPO has been an extraordinary organization to help connect women.
Whitaker: I definitely agree. I lost my son three years ago, and a nonprofit called Love on Black Women reached out immediately to connect me to resources for support. I’m very active in my sorority, and I’m a member of Professional Dimensions, which unites women who are doing work like me. Whatever you’re doing or want to do, I would say there’s a group for that.
Williams-Smith: I recently spoke with a young man about all the women’s organizations that we have here, and he said there is nothing like that for men. I told him there are country clubs. Both TEMPO and Professional Dimensions have been around for nearly 50 years, helping elevate women to positions of leadership. Now we have a network to boost each other and make an impact on our communities.
Friebert Schupper: I work with predominantly women, which is so inspiring to me. These are women who have gone through treatment with breast cancer and decided to give back. It’s healing through helping. We’re helping each other rise up as women, and that’s really what drives me.
Gutiérrez: Strong women have always been embedded in my life. I grew up with sisters, and at Catholic school, I always felt like I had strong women around me with the nuns. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. Being the mother of three girls, I feel like we as women are so much harder on one another, but in a loving way. I think when you’re surrounded like that, you always have people to sit you down and say, “Just go for it.”
Nicksin: That’s a great segue to my next question. I’m always curious if there was a turning point where you thought, “I want to accomplish this.”
Edelstein: I came from a large family with five brothers and sisters and very strong parents who were always supportive. Each one of us found our own career path, and they found a way to support whatever we did. They taught us we could be whatever we want, and to continue trying if we failed.
Nicksin: Can you give an example of a failure that ended up being a success?
Edelstein: From the time I was 5 years old, I thought I would play principal oboe in a major symphony orchestra. I did become principal oboe here in Milwaukee, but it wasn’t a full-time job. For me, that felt like a failure. But now I see I wasn’t supposed to, because I was supposed to do this work at MYSO.
Friebert Schupper: I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the vision of Melodie Wilson Oldenburg, the Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist who founded ABCD. In 1992, she used some of her broadcast time to announce that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Back then, you didn’t talk about breast cancer in public. I always have her in mind when I work. She broke the glass ceiling, starting conversations in a community where it was uncomfortable to talk about cancer. Her vision was that no one should be alone after a diagnosis, and that’s what drives me every day.
Williams-Smith: I grew up with report cards that said I was bossy but optimistic and nice. And what do you do with those things? You go into hospitality. I’ve always loved making people happy. I started babysitting at the age of 12. I worked at Starr Insurance when I was 14. My dad was a steel salesman, and I would sit on his lap when he was doing quotes. I think what really motivated me was when Donald Trump was elected in 2016. I thought, if a reality star can be president, I can be a CEO. What’s stopping me from doing whatever I want to do?
Gutiérrez: My parents are my inspiration. They came to this country with nothing and reached the American Dream. So anytime I thought anything was difficult, I thought about what they had to go through. They put five kids through college, and they’ve purchased two homes. All without knowing the language or getting an education. They were resilient and didn’t take “no” for an answer. Now, it’s my turn to open doors for people at the UCC.
Whitaker: I grew up with grandparents who wanted more for my life. When I became a teen mom, I wondered, does this mean the course of my life will change? But I went on to graduate at the top of my class. I became the first person in my family to get a college degree. I remember my grandparents saying “keep going” through all of it. I went on to get my law degree. I continue to believe there’s no limit to what I can do. I may fall down, but I get up and dust myself off. \The Bettys roundtable; photo by Aliza Baran
Nicksin: Ellen, you pair individuals who have been diagnosed with breast cancer with mentors. Can you give an example of the transformative power of that relationship?
Friebert Schupper: Your world is shattered after a breast cancer diagnosis. ABCD pairs people with a mentor who is trained in how to provide peer-to-peer emotional support. When someone reaches out to us, we ask about their specific diagnosis, treatment and stage and age. We connect them with a mentor who’s just like them. A 25-year-old who’s about to get married is different from a 65-year-old woman’s experience.
One mentor here in Milwaukee was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer at 33. She went through more treatment, including chemo, radiation and surgery. She reached out to ABCD because she felt like no one else was making a decision like she was – a flat closure rather than a breast reconstruction. We connected her with someone just like her, and now, as an ABCD mentor, she’s supported 40 women across the country.
Nicksin: Peggy, I want to know how you engender so much loyalty from the people you lead.
Williams-Smith: I appreciate you saying that. I love people, and I love radical hospitality, whether it’s a customer or staff. I let my staff do their jobs. I empower them to do the jobs they need to do, and that makes the organization so much better. I very rarely get involved unless I absolutely have to, and I think that that makes for a culture where people want to come to work because they know that they’re supported. I say all the time, we’re all going to make mistakes. I’m OK with mistakes, as long as we learn from them and we can move forward.
Nicksin: Laura, when you were a kid, you went to the UCC. How does that inform what you do?
Gutiérrez: My mom went to the UCC to learn English when I was a kid. She put my sisters and me in folkloric dancing, and my brother was in the boxing program while she took her class. It wasn’t just transformative for my mom, but for our whole family. That is something that informs every decision I make. I want to make sure I am community-centered first.
Nicksin: Bridget, what makes your hard work worthwhile?
Whitaker: We deliver hope to people who sometimes forget they’re the change they want to be. My hard days are when residents are feeling like they’re doing the work but not seeing change. They started a block club, they’re going to crime and safety meetings, and then something tragic happens. They feel hopeless. That’s when we remind them they’re not the only ones working toward a positive outcome.
We work with local businesses, schools, law enforcement and other community organizations. We want to make sure all of those stakeholders believe we all have a role in making our communities feel safe. We want to empower residents to keep being the change together.
Nicksin: Linda, how did being a musician influence what you do every day?
Edelstein: Music unites people. When you’re playing in an ensemble, you connect in a deeply meaningful way and create something that represents the past and the present. A piece of music could have been written yesterday or 350 years ago, and we have the honor of bringing that to life and building community with it.
At MYSO, we’re teaching our young people about how they see themselves, each other and the world around us, and that becomes a ripple effect. What happens in the rehearsal room or on the concert stage also happens in their families and at school. It goes with them into the world. The majority of our young people don’t go into music, but they take the skills they’ve learned – like empathy, discipline and time-management – to be the best at whatever they do.
Nicksin: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Whitaker: At the 2019 Bettys, Katie Sanders told a story about wanting to be a flight attendant. Someone once asked her, why not the pilot? That just stuck with me. It’s easy to second-guess ourselves, to stay in the background and watch things happen. So hearing her say that when she accepted her award was life-changing for me. That’s what I think about now when I consider new journeys.
Edelstein: Stop getting so upset about the little things. Momentary daily frustrations are just that. You can just move through them. Life is so much bigger than those moments.
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Williams-Smith: Once, at a meeting, there was a gentleman speaking to a group of women about board service and why there aren’t many women on boards. At the end of the presentation, he got up and he said, “Out of 50 women in this room, one of you gave me your resume. If this would have been a room full of men, I would have had at least 35 resumes in my hand.” That reminded me we as women often wait to be asked versus asking for it ourselves. That taught me to make the ask.
Friebert Schupper: Someone once said to me, “You’ll never work harder than in the job that you love.” I also embrace purposeful perseverance and tender tenacity, which I think we all have.
Gutiérrez: I would add “focus on what you can control.” You can go down a rabbit hole with the what-ifs. But what is in your control that you can make things happen with?
