Every year, when we ask you to nominate Women of Strength in the Susquehanna Valley, we are stunned. Achievements, adversities, creativity and intelligence. Perseverance and passion. But most of all, strength shines through their stories.
Selecting five women from this year’s nominations was incredibly difficult. However, it's a great problem to have and speaks to the depth of talent, leadership and character within our Central Pennsylvania community.
Prepare to be inspired, moved and amazed. We are beyond proud to introduce you to this year’s five exceptional Women of Strength.
When Heather Valudes found out she’d been named a Woman of Strength, she wasn’t sure she fit the bill.
“When I think about my work, strength isn’t always the first word that comes to mind,” says Valudes, 37. “But I do think I persevere a lot—I’m tenacious, and I show up in the work I do.”
That work includes being named the first female president and CEO of the Lancaster Chamber last year—a milestone year in which the chamber celebrated its 150th anniversary.
“It’s interesting to reflect on that, a year into the position,” Valudes says. “We’ve never put a woman in this role traditionally held by men, and I’m realizing how much weight other people have put on that—how monumental that was. I don’t know that I owned that from the jump.”
However, she credits her parents with helping her develop an appreciation for her native Lancaster County community at a young age.
“My parents were always engaged with our hyperlocal community, in our township. They modeled how you give back to your community and how policies impact your community,” Valudes explains.
Earning her college degree in political science and a minor in geography and planning, she says this "started me in the space of civic engagement" and lead to a position with the Building Industry Association of Lancaster County.
Her first of three positions with the chamber followed. initially as advocacy director, she saw firsthand how policies directly affected businesses and the workforce.
“Business is so integral to supporting their employees, and in doing so, supporting the community,” Valudes says. “We became engaged in conversations that impacted the community—transportation, the opioid crisis, and many more—by talking about what role the business community could play.”
When she looks back, she can see how strength was involved.
“Specifically in policy work, it takes time to get people on board,” Valudes says. “Driving toward solutions takes smaller wins until you get to completion. It’s seeing the long-term and trying not to get hung up in short-term setbacks and challenges. Working through them makes it more impactful on the other side.”
During the pandemic, Valudes served as vice president of the chamber.
“It was a whole different era of what tenacity means—how many businesses we were helping and assisting, and constantly showing up. Some of those effects are really long-term,” Valudes reflects. “Strength is staying with people.”
Other women continually inspire Valudes, including her coach Deb Rohrer, formerly of Leadership Lancaster—and a 2021 Susquehanna Style Woman of Strength.
“This recognition is such an honor because it’s something not based on your outputs, but on who you are as a person,” Valudes says. “I have two young daughters, and for them to see their mom in this role—it’s about how women hold space and move communities forward.”
Looking back, Rubina Azizdin sees how she’s pulled strength from her childhood to build a career in diversity and inclusion (D&I).
“When I think about my journey,” says Azizdin, 41, of Mechanicsburg, “it started when I was excluded as a student, being one of the only families of people of color in the school district 40 years ago, when we didn’t have inclusion.”
Born and raised in Lancaster County, Azizdin describes her immigrant family as very close.
“My parents had a cleaning business,” she explains. “I wasn’t your typical American teenager. On weekends, I was with my parents helping with the family business.”
For Azizdin, the experience was eye-opening.
“People used to treat my parents as custodians—that used to be heartbreaking, while they were just doing their jobs,” she says, “and this is why equity in the workplace is important—making sure everybody is treated fairly.”
Her career path began at Philhaven, a human services and mental health organization, where she coordinated a community-based parenting program that expanded to seven counties—while completing her master’s in counseling.
Then, as a career advisor at Central Penn College, “my interest in diversity sparked,” she says. Azizdin created a women’s leadership conference, which grew bigger each year.
With her circle of influence ever widening, Azizdin led corporate D&I training and served numerous community boards. Then, as director of the STEM-UP Network for Harrisburg University, her circle of contacts encompassed the Mid-Atlantic Region as she supported women in STEM fields.
It positioned Azizdin for her current role, global manager of D&I for innovative manufacturing company Kulicke & Soffa Industries, based in Singapore.
“This is a special role to me, because I’m their inaugural manager of D&I,” explains Azizdin, who regularly shares the value of D&I around the globe—in California, China, Israel, the Netherlands, and beyond.
“My work in D&I has revolved around bringing people together, educating and empowering people, creating awareness about how to be more inclusive as a person, as a neighbor, as a company—making sure people aren’t being left out, listening to all voices and opinions,” says Azizdin. “D&I isn’t just about skin color or racism—it’s ‘How are we bringing everybody to the table? Is there pay equity? Is the workplace welcoming and inclusive to new parents?’”
Speaking of parenting, Azizdin is also a mother of three.
“Strength, I would say, comes from overcoming adversities in challenging situations, where strength makes you a better person. It helps shape who you are,” she reflects. “In my case, I think achieving my professional goals with my background, my upbringing—it’s been very tough getting to this point in my career. But that’s one reason I’ve gotten into diversity—to try to make it easier for others to thrive. D&I is about respecting everybody’s differences—that’s a big mantra of mine. We really need to respect one another.”
Strength, to Ashley Walkowiak, means being a survivor.
“I was stalked and raped at age 17, before graduating high school, and I did not share that experience with anyone for nearly a full decade,” says Walkowiak, now 38, of Mechanicsburg. “It left me with PTSD, and college was a very scary and intimidating place.”
She switched gears, put college on hold and began working in state government.
“I thought it would be a short-term position, a clerical position, to take a breather,” Walkowiak explains.
Instead, it turned into her life’s passion. She’s been continually promoted, and her work intersected with her personal trauma.
“I found what felt like a family and safe space,” Walkowiak
says. “About a decade after my attack, I finally started working with a trauma therapist. After working through it, I made a career change.”
She left the Governor’s Office of Administration to serve as special assistant to the appointed commonwealth victim advocate, focusing on the rights and services provided to crime victims. She worked in tandem with a team that
tackled high-profile cases: convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky and sexual abuse within both the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts.
“I loved that work, but as you can imagine, it was emotionally grueling,” Walkowiak says. “When the opportunity came to move to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC), it allowed me to step back from the front line but continue doing advocacy work.”
Earlier this year, she was named the PHRC’s director of policy and intergovernmental affairs, ensuring civil rights protections for Pennsylvanians.
“When you ask God for an opportunity to do good and give back, you will receive that opportunity,” says Walkowiak. “I want to give back to the community of crime survivors. I want to do work that makes the world a more caring, safer place.”
Walkowiak treasures her community—serving as vice chair of the Cumberland County Commission for Women—as well as her family, which includes her husband and three sons. She’s inspired by her mother, who ran a high school program for at-risk youth. In 2022, she published a book with her brother.
“It’s a black-and-white photography and poetry book centered around grief and trauma, validating our low points and low feelings in an effort to move forward. My brother and I lost our sister, and it was a very traumatic experience for the whole family,” she says.
“Strength comes from remembering that we are not alone,” Walkowiak explains. “Women have been walking these paths for thousands of years, and our ability to branch out and make new paths only exists because of the women who have come before us. It’s our duty to make sure those paths stay open for our daughters and nieces, that we’re at the table where decisions are made, that we’re heard, that we’re believed. If we can ensure that the voices of women are heard, then we’ve done our job.”
Ashley Walkowiak’s book “Found. Still lost.” is available on Amazon.
Growing up in the Bronx, New York, Dr. Cherise Hamblin wanted to be a teacher. But one class changed her life’s course.
“I loved ninth grade biology—it was the first time I was academically challenged,” Hamblin recalls. “Years later, I reflected and realized it was the first Black teacher I’d had. Every day, I’d talk about what I learned in biology, at the dinner table, and my father said, ‘If you like biology, you could be a doctor.’”
Her school, the Bronx High School of Science, produced Nobel laureates and Harvard graduates, so Hamblin’s college search focused on “somewhere I wasn’t going to be just a number—and would set me up for success,” she says. Lancaster’s Franklin & Marshall College “rose to the top.”
At F&M, one undergrad connection turned out to be pivotal: Dr. Daniel Weber, an alum practicing at Lancaster General Hospital who became her mentor. He stayed in touch as Hamblin completed medical school training and was ready to launch her OBGYN career.
“He suggested I come back to Lancaster for a practice interview,” Hamblin explains. “But it was actually a real interview. And the Lancaster I saw was very different and positive, in all ways, from the Lancaster I remembered as a college student.”
Not only did she get the job, but she's since spent 12 years in Lancaster County, where she lives with her husband and two children in Lititz. Hamblin, 42, is a board-certified OB-GYN at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health.
“A lot of people think walking with a family through pregnancy and the birth of their child, as a major life moment, is so beautiful,” Hamblin says. “But partnering with a patient through cancer diagnosis or hysterectomy is also a tremendous honor and privilege.”
Hamblin realized her journey into medicine, as a Black doctor, wouldn’t have been possible without family support and mentorship, so she began mentoring F&M’s pre-med students and recruiting LGH colleagues—fellow alums—to do the same.
Mentoring, however, was tackling only part of a much larger issue: racial health disparities, affected by “the percentages of Black physicians being stagnant for over 40 years.”
That’s why she founded Patients R Waiting, a nonprofit dedicated to eliminating health disparities by encouraging diversity in medicine. In September, the organization held its seventh Annual Diversity in Medicine Conference.
“I think my journey is to help other doctors on their journeys—all types of Black and Brown doctors. We need to call out racism where it’s at play, and in order to combat racism, we have to be comfortable advancing equity,” Hamblin says. “When I think about strength, I think about physical strength, but in this case, we’re talking about character.”
It’s been a full-circle realization for Hamblin, thinking back to her childhood yearning to be a teacher.
“I know,” Hamblin says, “being an educator is part of my journey.”
To learn more about Patients R Waiting, and health disparities including the maternal mortality crisis, see patientsrwaiting.com.
From the time she was a little girl, Dr. Erin Golembewski-George always loved science.
“I would mix things together in the bathroom—lotions and potions—to see what happened. I was always interested in cause and effect and the natural world,” says Golembewski-George, 45, a lifelong York resident.
After earning her PhD at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, she took a position within its graduate school, where she remains today, 17 years later. As senior associate dean, she describes her role as “shepherding students who are learning how to be scientists as well as adults.”
She also identifies future growth areas within the sciences, then creates curricula to support those areas. It’s like looking into a crystal ball.
“I think solving science-related problems is the future. We’ve got a laundry list of infectious diseases, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and a mental health crisis,” she says. “Including women’s voices in science is really important, because we know the more diverse voices we have, the better we are at solving those problems.”
She’s inspired by microbiologist Dr. Rita Colwell, who served as the director of the National Science Foundation for many years.
“She has addressed infectious diseases coming out of Covid, and what the next disease may be, as well as access to clean water and its health impacts across the world,” Golembewski-George says. “I find all of it pretty inspiring.”
She gives back to the York community by serving on WellSpan Health’s Institutional Review Board and coaching York Suburban Middle School’s cross-country team. Golembewski-George’s family includes her husband and their three boys.
“Looking at my children’s classmates and their generation, I want them to be able to think scientifically about problems and the world—to not be afraid to ask questions, to talk with others, and get different perspectives on how to solve problems,” Golembewski-George says.
Ultimately, she believes science and strength have a lot in common: the ability to change the world.
“I think strength is the ability to carry a heavy load, and even when I falter, having that resilience to get up and keep doing my best in big and small ways,” she reflects. “Science is such an important discipline in improving the world, and I want everyone who loves science as much as I do to
have access and be able to change the world for the better.”
