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Our November HerStory recipient, Dr. Ildaura Murillo-Rohde, built her career around the idea that representation matters, and devoted herself to making space to encourage more people of hispanic descent to pursue careers in the medical field and work in hispanic communities. 

Born in Panama in 1920, Dr. Murillo-Rohde came to Texas to work as a community nurse, and realized how under-represented hispanic nurses were in the hispanic community. In the 1940s, there was a distinct dearth of cultural awareness in the medical field (not that there isn’t still a huge gap in medical cultural competence now, but it was much worse then). Dr. Murillo-Rohde realized how important it is for medical providers to understand not only a patient’s medical symptoms, but also how a patient’s culture might inform their understanding of and decisions about their medical care. She spent her career uplifting and encouraging hispanic medical professionals, and founded (and served as the first president of) the National Association of Hispanic Nurses in the late 1970s. 

Driven by a desire to create a world in which hispanic nurses were supported and plentiful enough for hispanic communities, Dr. Murillo-Rohde pursued degrees in psychiatric nursing, education, and administration, and was the first hispanic nurse to be awarded a PhD from New York University. She worked with the World Health Organization, the UN, AND she was even a tennis instructor! (Not at all germane to this letter, but we thought it was an interesting tidbit to add.) And at every step of her career, she was sure to work on representation and mentorship, with a focus on the concepts of community, respect, and cross-cultural competence in nursing. In 1994, she was named a Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing.

Our November colorway, Flowers in Your Hair, is an homage to Dr. Murillo-Rohde’s penchant for wearing an orchid in her hair at nursing conferences, and we found a lovely bright green and pink orchid to inspire us. We hope that Dr. Murillo-Rohde’s story inspires you, too.

US Senator Tammy Duckworth is our October HerStory recipient. She is a decorated veteran of the war in Iraq, and was the first disabled woman to hold a seat in the US House of Representatives, elected in 2012. She moved from the House to the Senate in 2016, and has spent her time in Congress fighting for both Veteran’s rights and Family Leave. When she had her second child in 2018, she became the first person to give birth while serving in Congress. She then proceeded to load her 10-day old baby up and bring her to the floor of Congress to cast an important vote on a presidential appointment that she opposed.  

Duckworth wanted more than anything to be a helicopter pilot, and even after being shot down and losing both legs and the full use of one arm in a rocket-propelled grenade attack, her recovery was focused on once again getting into the cockpit. A friendship with a sitting US Senator changed all of that. This senator encouraged her to run for office, and once it became clear that her injuries were going to preclude her from flying, she threw her hat in the ring on a congressional seat, which she lost. Undeterred, Tammy Duckworth took that loss as an opportunity, and her new life trajectory was begun. Shortly after, she was appointed as Director of Veterans Affairs in Illinois, and in 2012, she ran for a House seat, won that, and has been in politics ever since. Two causes she has consistently supported are family leave rights and veteran’s issues. 

Like many of our HerStory recipients, Senator Duckworth was the first of many things: the first first female double amputee from the Iraq war; the first Thai American woman elected to Congress; the first person born in Thailand elected to Congress; the first woman with a disability elected to Congress; the first female double amputee in the Senate; and the first senator to give birth while in office. Her strength and commitment are an inspiration to us all, and our Veteran Affairs colorway, dyed to look like the camouflaged uniform she wore while in the service, pays homage to the armed forces, for which she continues to fight. Because she was the first in all of these ways, the path is clearer for others to make their own way.

Sonia Sotomayor, or Sonia from the Block, as our colorway that honors her is called, is the third woman, the first (and currently only) woman of color, and the first Latina to serve on the United States Supreme Court, having been nominated by Barack Obama in 2009. She grew up in the Bronx, in Puerto Rican neighborhoods, and self-identifies as Nuyorican (a portmanteau of New York and Puerto Rican, referring to members of the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York City). After initially dreaming of becoming a detective like her hero Nancy Drew, at 10 years old, Sotomayor changed gears and zeroed in on a future in law, inspired by Perry Mason.

Sotomayor received a full scholarship to Princeton, and her acceptance into the Ivy League school was assisted by affirmative action, in which she believes deeply. She has spoken up about the inherent biases in many standardized tests that make it harder for people from disadvantaged communities to thrive; affirmative action levels the playing field and gives opportunities to those with fewer advantages. During her time at Princeton, she advocated for the University to engage in more fair and inclusive hiring practices, and her work resulted in the first Latinx faculty members being hired, and more voice given to organizations centered around people of color, in particular Latinx folks. She became interested and invested in Critical Race Theory, which, unlike the culture war now raging would have you believe, is a body of legal scholarship that examines social, cultural, and legal issues primarily as they relate to race and racism in the United States. She closed out her college career by winning a top prize for undergraduates that honored both her work at school and her advocacy and volunteerism.

After law school, Sotomayor worked for a spell in the prosecutor’s office in NYC, and vigorously prosecuted violent crime. She deepened her commitment to community involvement as well, fighting for the rights of the disadvantaged and disenfranchised in her post-prosecutorial career first as a lawyer and then as a judge. As she rose through the judicial ranks, she became known as a strict but fair jurist. She’s also the judge who saved baseball in the mid-1990s (her injunction against the MLB effectively restarted the stalled season). Her first case as a Supreme Court justice was Citizen’s United, and she argued against the rights of corporations in matters of campaign finance.

Time and again, Sonia from the Block has argued in favor of equity and fairness, handing down rulings with a strong but balanced hand, and advancing the causes of justice and equity. She’s a role model for all young women, in particular young women of color, as they navigate a world in which they might just need to advocate for the changes that will allow them to thrive. As we all navigate this very difficult world, may we all remember that fighting for what is right is never wrong, and may we all look to Justice Sotomayor for inspiration and guidance. Our Sonia from the Block colorway was inspired by the Puerto Rican street art in Sotomayor’s beloved Bronx, the colors and visual textures that reflect and inform the culture of the Nuyoricans that live there.

Mumilaaq Qaqqaq (she shares how to pronounce her name here) rose to prominence in Canada when she made an impassioned speech in the House of Commons on International Women’s Day in 2017. She was a part of a group called Daughters of the Vote, which empowers young women to speak up about what they want their votes to accomplish, and what their visions are for the future of their communities, both small (town) and large (country). Qaqqaq, an Inuit, spoke about suicide rates in Indigenous people, and her vision for a Canada in which Indigenous issues are front and center. She was approached by the New Democratic Party to run in her home territory of Nunavut (a largely Indigenous territory, and the newest, largest, and northernmost territory in Canada). She won her seat in Canadian’s Parliament by running on a platform that centered the basic human rights of Inuit people, including suicide prevention measures, securing more food security, insuring access to safe water, and increased access to safe housing. 

Throughout her tenure in Parliament, Quaqqaq worked hard on Indigenous issues and rights, but felt her momentum stymied at every turn. Earlier this year, she announced that she isn’t going to seek reelection. The racism she endured, both on a personal scale (she admitted to never feeling completely safe at work in a stirring speech on the floor, discussing how Parliamentary security would often question her rights to be there), and on a systemic scale (the futility she felt at trying to make change in the face of a bureaucracy that is steeped in historical white supremacy and systemic racism) was inescapable, and she came to the realization that she could do more good outside of the political structure. With the time she has left in her term, she has been advocating for stronger climate change policies, and, most recently, a reckoning for the harm perpetrated by the residential schools throughout Canada, pushing the Canadian government to formally investigate the crimes against humanity that we are learning more and more about. 

Our Aurora Borealis colorway in an homage to the otherworldly-seeming light displays that can be enjoyed in Mumilaaq Qaqqaq’s beloved Nunavut, and to the light that Quaqqaq is in Canadian activism. We hope you enjoy learning more about her, and keeping an eye on her as we are sure she will continue to advocate for the Indigenous peoples of Canada. She’s only 27, after all.