Oklahoma Watch will host a public forum on Tuesday, Oct. 24, about the treatment of women in the workplace and public and private-sector leadership roles.
Featured panelists at the “Oklahoma Watch-Out” forum will be Rhonda Hooper, president and CEO of Jordan Advertising and chair of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber; state Rep. Cyndi Munson of Oklahoma City, a member of the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women, and Holly Cole, director of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s area office in Oklahoma City.
Register to Attend ‘The Treatment of Women’
The free forum, entitled “The Treatment of Women,” will be held from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Kamp’s 1910 Café, 10 N.E. 10th St. in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma Watch Executive Editor David Fritze will moderate the discussion, and questions from the audience will be taken. Guests are encouraged to register online at this link.
In recent years, the visibility of women in leadership roles in Oklahoma has increased, with a female governor and other state leaders, successful entrepreneurs and corporate executives. At the same time, sexual harassment cases involving legislators have seized headlines, the state ranks high in violence by men against women, and Oklahoma has one of the nation’s largest gender gaps in compensation. Is women’s quality of life in Oklahoma getting better or worse?
About the Panelists
Rhonda Hooper is president and CEO of Jordan Advertising, a marketing and communications agency based in Oklahoma City. She is the third CEO in the agency’s history, and the second female to hold the top position.
This year, Hooper became the first woman to head the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, which was founded 128 years ago. She previously served on the chamber’s executive committee as vice chair of economic development and convention and tourism development. Hooper has chaired the Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Commission and led the MAPS III Coalition. She is chair of the governing board of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology; past chair of the Oklahoma Business Roundtable, and past chair of Leadership Oklahoma. She was recently inducted into the Oklahoma State University Hall of Fame.
Rep. Cyndi Munson was elected to the Legislature in September 2015, becoming the state’s first Asian-American female legislator, and was re-elected in 2016. She is a Democrat serving District 85, which includes part of Oklahoma City, Nichols Hills, The Village and Warr Acres. Munson was recently named to the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women. Prior to becoming a legislator, she spent five years working for Girl Scouts of Western Oklahoma, providing leadership programs for girls in low-income schools, juvenile detention centers and public housing.
Munson received a bachelor’s in political science at the University of Central Oklahoma and a master’s in leadership education at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln.
Holly Cole became director of the EEOC’s Oklahoma City area office in November 2010. Previously, she was manager of the training services support division for the FAA Academy and manager of the FAA’s human resource management division, both located at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center. From 1999 to 2005, Cole was a senior trial attorney for the EEOC in Oklahoma City and was in private law practice. She also served for two years as an arbitrator presiding over labor disputes between the U.S. Postal Service and the American Postal Workers’ Union.
