Bold and Brilliant
These women lead, build, and fight to remake the world around them.
Amazing women surround us, but many go unnoticed.
Some might assume living with heart is just what a woman is supposed to do, that it’s part of the job. Those folks don’t realize the resilience needed to get up and succeed every day in a world that often doesn’t want to see that happen.
Every woman has to be strong to survive, but the women highlighted on the following pages are particularly brilliant. In the face of all they encounter, they persist as creators, advocates, empathetic listeners, artists, storytellers, and philanthropists.
They are remarkable. They are leaders. And yes, they are women.
Hyeonock Lee
Hyeonock “Mel” Lee is a community organizer and immigrant rights advocate with a deep commitment to building power in immigrant and marginalized communities. Two life-changing events drew her to her work as the executive director of the Woori Center, based in Lansdale: her immigration to the United States in 2010; and the Sewol Ferry disaster in 2014, which claimed the lives of nearly 300 people, most of them high school students, off the coast of South Korea.
“As a mother of two, watching hundreds of young people lose their lives while the government failed to respond with accountability shook me to the core,” she says. “I couldn’t return to everyday life as if nothing had happened. That tragedy forced me to confront a hard truth: Systems fail when people are silent. I realized that I needed to be more proactive and vocal in issues close to my heart.”
Lee, a native of South Korea, has also worked with organizations such as the Korean Women’s Center and Korean Americans for Civic Participation, a coalition of grassroots organizations working to amplify Korean American civic engagement.
More than six years ago, she and other Korean American community leaders founded the Woori Center. She has served as executive director since 2020.
“As a first-generation immigrant, I’ve personally experienced—and witnessed in others—the barriers immigrants face, especially those who are linguistically isolated, low income, women, youth, or seniors,” she says. “Things I once took for granted in Korea, like access to health care or being able to communicate in my own language, became privileges. This drives my passion for Woori Center’s mission.”
The center’s name, Woori, means “us” or “we” in Korean. It works to empower the Korean and Asian American communities in the Philadelphia area through direct services, advocacy and organizing, civic engagement, leadership development, and arts and culture programs.
“While we provide essential services to meet the immediate needs of our most vulnerable community members, our broader mission is to build collective power and drive long-term, systemic change,” Lee shares. “Our work centers on advancing immigrant rights, racial justice, language access, and youth empowerment—ensuring that our communities are not only supported, but also heard, valued, and equipped to shape their own futures.”
Her commitment reflects both her own lived experiences and those of the people around her—essential in a time of rising xenophobia, racial injustice, deepening political division, and widening inequality. Since January, Lee says, Woori staff and volunteers have had more than 250 conversations with parents, workers, and small-business owners in Montgomery County and surrounding areas.
“Across these conversations, we kept hearing the same thing: People are afraid,” Lee says. “They’re afraid to go to work, afraid to walk to the grocery store, afraid to send their children to school or seek medical care. Small-business owners talk about emptier shops, quieter weekends, and parking lots that stay vacant. Fear is not only affecting individual lives; it’s shaping our neighborhoods and our local economy.
“And yet, in the face of this fear, we also see courage,” she continues. “We see more people stepping up, speaking out, and organizing for justice and inclusion. That’s what gives me hope. As difficult as this moment is, it’s also a turning point—a time for communities to reclaim their voice and demand a different future. I believe deeply in the power of ordinary people to move history forward.”
One relevant initiative is the Woori Center’s Korean Modern History Seminar Series, launched this spring. The series grew out of a desire to learn from the past and draw strength in the present.
“Korea’s path to democracy was not a gift from those in power,” she says. “It was won through the courage and sacrifice of ordinary people: students, workers, farmers, and families. Their struggles are not just Korean history; they are people’s history, and they belong to all of us.
“As we confront growing threats to democracy here in the U.S.—from voter suppression to rising authoritarianism—we felt it was essential to look back at the spirit of resistance and hope that shaped Korea’s democratic movements. That legacy reminds us that change is always possible—and that we have the collective power to defend and expand democracy, here and now.”
Glenda Brion
Glenda Brion has been volunteering since she was a child, but it was her involvement with Friends Association For Care & Protection of Children that started her journey toward helming her own community benefit organization.
“Friends Association is a shelter for families that helps them find housing,” she shares. “The idea of someone being homeless, and with a child especially, and not able to find permanent housing was always very concerning to me.”
Brion, who first started working with the organization as a volunteer, later in development, came to a realization: When someone finds housing, they may not necessarily have anything to furnish the space. She began reaching out to what she called an “S.O.S.” list to help fill that void, and was “absolutely blown away by the generosity of people and the quality of items that people were looking to get rid of.”
From there, she says it made sense to “move into the larger picture of serving the whole county.” With that inspiration, she launched the Community Warehouse Project of Chester County in 2017, which she now serves as CEO and executive director.
“It was really exciting, but very stressful getting started, because it was a completely fresh startup,” she recalls. “I needed a website, a board, materials, even a logo, but people stepped up in such a big way all around the area and we really made it all happen together.”
Quest for the Best, a Wayne-based charitable enterprise that provides services to Pennsylvania organizations recognized as tax exempt or seeking tax-exempt status, helped develop the Community Warehouse Project’s policies and processes. It also helped the organization understand its needs and limitations.
After initially moving from space to space within Chester County, a developer peer of Brion’s stepped in to offer what she now considers a permanent space in Downingtown—about 4,000 square feet, used to house wares for dispersal.
While initially people would come directly to the warehouse for furniture, which presented challenges including transportation and hauling, the process has been streamlined; now goods are delivered directly to recipients. As a result, recipients receive all their furniture or housewares usually the day they move into new housing, thereby providing more stability as they go forward.
“We get to make people happy by taking their unwanted goods and giving them to people who need them,” Brion adds. “It’s a win-win.”
Brion believes that stable housing can stop the cycle of homelessness for many who might otherwise find themselves homeless again.
“They can have dignity,” Brion says. “They can have people over if they want. Their children can have a place to do homework. They’re getting a good night’s sleep, because we prioritize beds. People are just so grateful to have one less thing to think about trying to find money for.”
For donors, the process is easy: Send a photo or photos of items, and the Community Warehouse Project will reply right away to say whether or not it is a good fit for those they serve. The screening process ensures that items are of good quality and will accommodate clients’ living spaces.
Brion has a personal connection to one community in particular: survivors of domestic violence. As a child, she and her sister moved with her mother out of a domestic-violence situation and found themselves without permanent housing for a time.
“We would stay with friends until she could come up with a little money to get us a mobile home we lived in for a while, then we were able to move into a little house in West Grove,” Brion shares. “[My mother] was lucky enough to have friends until she could get her feet under her, but it has always been very clear that this can happen to anybody.
“Being homeless is not necessarily a result of anything you did wrong,” she continues. “It’s not always people just making bad decisions. I think that’s really important for people to get their heads around. A lot of small things that don’t seem very important can take you there, and who are we to judge that?”
Jennifer Lin
First as a newspaper reporter and now as a documentary filmmaker, Jennifer Lin has spent her life working to capture the grace and dignity inherent in the human experience.
She spent more than 30 years as a reporter with The Philadelphia Inquirer. She covered foreign affairs in Washington, D.C., served as a Wall Street correspondent, and even saw several postings in China in the late 1990s.
In 2015, she transitioned out of the newspaper world to finish a book she’d been “working on for a lifetime—literally.” Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family, an epic memoir chronicling five generations of the Lin family going back to the 1800s, debuted in 2017.
A keen and growing interest in documentary storytelling led Lin behind the lens for her next project. She teamed up with Sam Katz, a Philadelphia film producer, to produce Beethoven in Beijing, which premiered in 2020. The film delves into the unique legacy of the Philadelphia Orchestra in China, which started in 1972 when Richard Nixon secured an invitation for his favorite orchestra to visit the People’s Republic of China.
She found inspiration for her next project, the 30-minute film Ten Times Better, while researching in the New York Public Library. This 2024 work chronicles the marvelous life of George Lee, a groundbreaking yet unheralded Broadway dancer, after fleeing China in 1949 to a refugee camp and ultimately landing in New York City.
“I saw pictures of George Lee performing the Chinese dance in 1954 for The Nutcracker,” Lin shares. “At the time, I didn’t know of any prominent Asian male dancers. As a young dancer, he got rave reviews in the press. You can tell from the photos he was just extraordinary. I became obsessed with finding him.”
A six-week quest led her to a truly remarkable man.
“The first time I talked to George, I knew this story had to be told,” she says. “He told me his life story. It is truly epic. He was a pioneer, but never saw himself as a pioneer.”
Lee passed away in April 2025.
Lee passed away in April 2025.
“I was with him about 10 days before he died,” Lin shares. “He and I had a nice long talk. I said, ‘Your mom would be so proud of you.’ Even as a 90-year-old man, he was motivated to please his mom. He was such a humble, quiet, happy man. He just moved on and didn’t look back. He gave me a gift.
“In the mosaic of history, this is a piece of the puzzle,” she continues. “That’s what it’s all about: telling stories, elevating stories, and helping people.”
Her third and latest film, About Face, centers on diversity in dance as well, this time spotlighting two dancers of Asian descent in New York City: Phil Chan and Georgina Pazcoguin. Both dancers, she says, are challenging the ballet world to rid itself of offensive stereotypes and changing how Asians are portrayed on stage.
About Face, which is slated for release later this year, is the project’s second name. She changed the initial title after seeing “a very virulent anti-Asian wave was starting to build” in 2020.
“I think it’s an important film for our time because it looks at representation in the arts, and why it matters to see yourself on stage and see yourself accurately and authentically, not as a caricature,” she says. “You can draw a straight line from how Asians are portrayed in art to violence. This is a good time for a story like this.”
Though she has told hundreds of stories, the enthusiasm, interest, and empathy with which Lin shares the details of people’s lives is astonishing, remarkable, and aspirational. She notes similarities and differences among the media she has explored, and credits her investigative background with this: “Because I was a journalist, I know a story when I see a story.”
Cheryl Brubaker
For Cheryl Brubaker, “It’s very much about how we can be the best communities we can be.”
It started with academic successes including a master’s degree in nonprofit management and an undergraduate degree in social work, and has evolved into a 25-plus-year career in everything from organizational management to direct services. She previously held leadership roles with Women Against Abuse in Philadelphia, Norristown’s Victim Services Center, and the YMCA of Bucks County, and she spent seven years as executive director of the Women’s Resource Center.
Today she is executive director of The Fund for Women and Girls. The organization serves women, girls, and individuals with lived female experience including cisgender women and girls, trans women and girls, and nonbinary/gender nonconforming adults, youth, and children in Chester County.
Among current initiatives, The Fund for Women and Girls is looking at various laws, as well as county and local ordinances, to support gender pay equity and transparency. The organization also works extensively with high school students. At present, the Vote16 PA initiative, which seeks to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in school board elections, is a top priority.
She describes a recent event called Advocacy in Action Day, which brought together youth organizations and local and state legislators, as “an incredible experience I think for both sides.”
“We had a group of girls from southern Chester County who have been greatly impacted by changes around immigration,” she says. “Most of those experiences aren’t making it to state legislative offices for safety reasons, fear; I think it was helpful for legislators as well as the students present to really have the opportunity to share those experiences, talk about their concerns, and have those legislators interact with them.”
The Fund for Women and Girls was started in 1996 by a group of women with “incredible forethought,” according to Brubaker. She’s honored to be part of that near-30-year legacy.
Brubaker credits her time growing up in a Mennonite community, of which she is no longer a part, with her strong commitment to uplifting others for the good of all.
“If something happens to someone [in the community], everyone comes out to support them,” she says. “Back in the day it was the tradition of the barn raising—if a barn burns down, everyone comes out. That community still has that value. That’s where it comes from for me.
“The newer-generation culture values individualism, an ‘I did this myself’ kind of thing, and that almost never happens,” she continues. “Usually someone has had help from somebody along the way. There is a balance of individualism, but we will all be better if we create a strong community.”
Donye Price
Donye Price will celebrate her 11th year as a Chester firefighter this August. It was hardly an easy road to get to where she is today.
“In 2013, I was sitting in a cubicle, crying, and thought: This cannot be it,” she shares. “I started going over the things I like to do, and it always pointed to me helping people.”
At first the born-and-raised Chester local looked to the police academy, but she found her true calling as a firefighter.
“Chester not having a female firefighter was not surprising to me,” she says. “I grew up in Chester, and never saw any females on the fire trucks. It was important for me to at least give the fire department a shot, being that I’m a Chester native and dedicated to serving my community. It’s been my purpose all along.”
She found another as an author just last year with the publication of her debut children’s book, Girls Can Be Firefighters Too! She credits friend and author Roniesha Seaton as a driving force behind the book, which is available on Amazon, as well as countless visits to local schools over the past 10 years, when she would visit to showcase firefighting as a career. Students, little boys in particular, would ask, “Are you a real firefighter?”
The book also has a deeper meaning. Price has a son on the autism spectrum who was nonverbal until age four, and who began reading at age six. She says she wanted to give him a book that he could read himself one day.
Since publishing the book, Price has visited approximately 15 schools in the tristate area to share her work. When asked about the importance of visiting students in person to talk about her journey, Price says kids “need to understand that they will only go as far as they actually believe. Being a role model who can relate and connect with the students, it’s important to connect and educate.
“The fear of the unknown will hold you back from so much,” she continues. “Understanding fire and how much of an impact I could possibly have in my community led me to so much.”
This includes her passion for wellness in all areas of life, including physical and emotional wellness. She even has her own brand, My SereniTeas, which she sees as a wellness hub designed to provide “the sought-out peace everyone needs.”
She also plans to continue her writing. Next up: a book for middle and high school students.
She also plans to continue her writing. Next up: a book for middle and high school students.
Shelby Fahrni
Shelby Fahrni opened her first restaurant in her grandma’s attic. Well, not really, but her playtime restaurant, which she dubbed “The Window of London Café,” marked the beginning of what would become her life’s passion: food.
“I started in Brazilian restaurants as a hostess when I was 18,” shares Fahrni, chef/owner of The Cooking Studio in Telford. “But I always wanted to be a chef as a child. I would use Windows 98 to make recipes with borders and would serve imaginary food. It wasn’t until going to business school that I realized how badly I wanted to be in the kitchen.”
The Kansas City native dropped out and jumped into an apprenticeship-based culinary program that took her all over the world. She spent the first five years of her kitchen career with the former Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group, which included classical training and time working in Bologna, Italy, before coming back to the U.S. to work with high-end seafood restaurant Eddie V’s.
“I ended up opening 17 restaurants with them as an opening chef and corporate trainer before I turned 30,” says Fahrni, who has appeared on Food Network favorites including Guy’s Grocery Games and Chopped. “That experience was super helpful for opening my own place. Because I had seen so many restaurants, I knew the challenges to look for.”
Like many, the pandemic changed the course of her career. She found herself falling out of love with running restaurants in favor of teaching online classes.
“People paid to be there, so that was good market validation for me,” she recalls, “and I saved all the money I made from the online classes to open a brick-and-mortar location.”
Fahrni’s school, The Cooking Studio, is an 1,800-square-foot space that previously housed vegan and barbecue restaurants. The dining room is the main classroom, where she holds classes for up to 16 people at a time, and more for private events. Students prep in that area, then transition to a full commercial kitchen to cook their creations.
The sky is the limit in terms of what the school’s classes cover; how-tos for pierogies, homemade pasta, and Egyptian favorites are just a few examples. She has also gone back to the digital roots of her operation with an online educational platform and an online community, just launched in March. In addition to being able to livestream, classes are kept in a digital library where students can learn a dish not in 30-second social media video blips, but in real time, so they can follow along and concentrate on technique.
“I’m very casual with the way I teach,” she says. “My motto is: It’s your life, your party.”
Sophie Fontecchio
Sophie Fontecchio took up baking as a child to spend more time with her mom. Her love of the craft took off during the pandemic. “Cooking, baking—it was a good time to develop those skills,” she says.
A high school student at the time, Fontecchio had been searching for ways to help in the wake of a friend’s suicide. She felt compelled to use her newfound passion to uplift others, which led to the creation of Let’s Bake the World a Better Place.
“My friend’s name was Rhyland McCullough,” she shares. “We were friends in middle school. He was a freshman at Downingtown West High School when he died at age 14.”
His mother, Jennifer Moore, started Rhy’s Above, a nonprofit dedicated to mental health advocacy and awareness. So far Let’s Bake the World a Better Place has held three separate bake-sale fundraisers for Rhy’s Above.
“I realized then that baking was a good means for raising awareness of a cause, as well as funds for it,” Fontecchio adds. “We reached a lot of people who were not typically engaged in activism or advocacy. I took that to heart and realized I could make a big impact.”
One bake sale turned into another and ultimately, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to supporting a wide range of nonprofit organizations through baking and mental health advocacy. While funds are necessary, Fontecchio sought a more tangible way to reach people.
“In 2023 I learned about the existence of care packages for cancer patients,” Fontecchio says. “My neighbor is involved in a nonprofit that makes these care packages for women fighting cancer and their families. I thought about how people struggling with mental illness also deserve to receive a care package and how they could really benefit not just from what is in the care package, but from knowing that someone cares about them.
“When I searched for information on the internet, I only found examples of for-profit mental health care packages and they weren’t specifically tied to suicide prevention,” she continues. “This is how I came up with the idea of making mental health care packages for teens, by teens, to be placed in school counseling offices and other safe places.”
Each individualized care package contains items including letters of support written by other teens, journals, friendship bracelets, candy, stress-relief toys, and stickers with local and national mental health crisis hotline numbers. Fontecchio sees these care packages as “vessels of support and encouragement” for teens who are reaching out for help, emphasizing that they are not alone in their struggles.
Let’s Bake the World a Better Place now also accepts requests for care package kits via the organization’s website. Student groups can receive all the materials they need for making care packages, along with instructions for what’s appropriate to write in each letter.
“The idea is that students can come together, talk about mental health, and create these packages together and place them throughout their community,” she says. “It is my goal to expand the care packages and kits to universities.”
Fontecchio, who will start her sophomore year at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall, is currently minoring in entrepreneurship. She hopes to learn more about writing grants so she can continue to fund the organization’s work.
“College is a very stressful time for students, and I would like to see [care packages] placed in advising centers, student rec centers, and counseling centers,” she says. “During the 2024–25 academic year, I distributed worry stones donated by the Phillip Diaz Bright Star Foundation on the University of North Carolina [at] Chapel Hill campus. I see this as a first step.”
One of her biggest goals is to show others that they can make a difference in their community no matter their age.
“Maybe I can light a spark in a young person’s eye that, ‘Maybe I can do that,’” she says. “You’re never too young to make an impact. So many people want to help, get you where you want to be, and help you move forward.”
Published (and copyrighted) in Suburban Life magazine, May 2025.
