Chamber honors women who help shape community

Photos: Women of Excellence winners

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File photo Guests are seen at the Women of Excellence gala in 2007.

Gala in honor of winners set for Nov. 20.

By Dave Greber, Staff Writer Updated 4:20 PM Thursday, November 19, 2009

Each year, the West Chester Chamber Alliance honors 10 local women who have had an influence in shaping the community.

The women are chosen from among nomination letters submitted to the Chamber — letters that celebrate their passion, determination and endless gifts.

This year is no different. The West Chester Chamber Alliance will honor these 10 women — including two young women — during the ninth annual Women of Excellence Awards Dinner and Gala.

The event takes place Friday, Nov. 20, at the Cincinnati Marriott North off Muhlhauser Road in West Chester Twp.

This year’s presenting sponsor is Mercy Hospital Fairfield. The event also will feature a keynote address by Diane Brown, former deputy director of the protocol office of the Secretary of Defense.

Young Women  of Excellence

Bethany Dibble

From an early age, Bethany Dibble was destined — and tapped — to be a teacher. But it’s not what she wants to do with the rest of her life.

That’s because she views the traditional teaching profession as almost too restrictive of the growth she’s witnessed in others through her guidance.

Dibble, now 19, began taking karate at age 5. Four years later, she earned the level of black belt and began coaching. She became a certified instructor in eighth grade and at age 15, she led her own classes.

As a student at Lakota East High School — where she would later graduate with honors — Dibble helped teach seventh graders social studies.

Although she’s spent nearly half her young life teaching others, Dibble said she will pursue other avenues — although similar — in college at Kent State University.

Another passion, working with children with special needs, started at an early age in karate classes, but grew to other areas of her life.

At 16, Dibble began volunteering at West Chester Twp.’s Pump It Up, a business of indoor inflatables that often hosts groups of children with developmental disabilities. For the past two years, she’s returned home from Kent State to continue her work there.

She says special needs children “aren’t always sure they can do something, but when you show them that they can do something, it makes you feel so amazing.”

She also found something else out.

“I knew I love teaching, and I knew I loved my kids, but not the subject,” Dibble said. “I had to figure out (in college) what I wanted to do to be with kids that wasn’t teaching.”

Katie Giuliano

Not many people can say they helped people thousands of miles away receive a basic need. Katie Giuliano can.

As a Girl Scout, Giuliano learned about a village in central Uganda that was without fresh water. Through a family friend, she learned about a charity that raised money to construct wells to eliminate waterborne diseases, provide cleaner water and make life easier for local residents.

Then she learned about the $25,000 price tag.

Undeterred, Giuliano managed to raise the money in a matter of several months through garage and bake sales, solicitation letters, even collecting old cell phones and printer ink cartridges.

She had help, but the young woman spearheaded a campaign for dozens of people she would only meet once.

“I never ran out of volunteers,” Giuliano said of her fundraising effort. “It felt good to get everyone else involved. It definitely was a project that I couldn’t do myself.”

The summer before her senior year at Ursuline Academy, Giuliano traveled to the village in Uganda by raising additional funds.

The locals even waited for her to pump the first drops from the well.

“I was so excited because $25,000 is a lot of money, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it or if I could even do it,” she said. “It’s such a big thing to be able to do something for one person. But, to be able to do something for an entire village, it was just overwhelming.”

Giuliano is continuing her fundraising efforts for various charities that raise money for African countries for things like sewing machines, goats and chickens. Her next project is an irrigation system for a village near the one she helped bring water to years ago.

Women of Excellence

Sister Anne Schulz

With drive, passion and a broad educational perspective, West Chester Twp.’s Sister Anne Schulz turned a small school operating out of a church basement into a multimillion dollar facility that now serves hundreds of local children.

The Mother Teresa Catholic Elementary School was an idea born from a group of parents who attended Saint Maximilian Kolbe Church and wanted a private elementary education for their children.

Schulz, an educator since 1965, saw an advertisement in a local newspaper offering a position as teacher and principal of the budding school.

Following a short interview, “They hired me on the spot,” Schulz remembers fondly.

She’s spent the better part of the past decade sprinting with those parents’ ideas and now leads a school of more than 400 students in grades kindergarten through eight, averaging the addition of a new building wing every two or three years since.

“It’s really the parents’ involvement that makes the school so unique,” she said. “It’s really the parents who run the school.”

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Women of Excellence

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