The Circle of Women began in 2002 when Judith Lockhart-Radtke and Pia Scognamiglio, a Swiss-Mexican midwife, joined to support the women of Oaxaca in building healthy and viable communities.

Our staff and volunteers are professionals from varied cultural backgrounds working in the fields of community organization and development, social work, education, midwifery and women's health. We are chartered as a non-profit organization in Oaxaca, Mexico and a U.S. 501(c)3.

Founder

Judith Lockhart-Radtke is a Clinical Social Worker with 40 years of experience and a midwife with seven years of experience. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, Simmons College School of Social Work and Birthwise Midwifery School. Judith has been passionate about the women of the world since she began her clinical work but especially since she traveled with Oxfam America and Grassroots International looking at their projects through out the developing world. She has studied work with women on five continents. The Mixteca women captured her imagination when she was working with Rebecca Ratcliff, MD doing health and empowerment trainings in the mountains of Oaxaca. She has attended the Women’s Conference in Beijing, World Social Forum in Puerto Allegre, Brazil and Midwifery and Social Work conferences in many areas. She is a wife, mother of three and grandmother of five. Judith can be reached at judithlockhartradtke@gmail.com

Pia Scognamiglio is no longer with the Circle of Women. She has moved on to do other projects.

Teacher
Literacy Program

Edith Espana is a key member of the Mixteca community of weavers.  She is the talented literacy teacher who ushered 10 women into level two and is now taking them on to the next level.  She is the administrator of the weaving project and is currently taking training in computers.  She is a new and beautiful weaver.  Additionally, she is on the Circle Oaxaca where she clearly and candidly presents the Mixteca women’s point of view.

Edith is a single mother of two lovely daughters.  She grew up in Miramar where her Mother is a fine weaver.  She is a high school graduate and has done training as a nurse.

Teacher
Literacy Program

AUGUSTINA GARCIA LOPEZ joined the Mixteca literacy program to work with a number of new students who want to achieve basic literacy – older women who never had the opportunity to attend school.  Born and raised in the mountain village of Miramar, she attended high school in a neighboring village and has completed part of her university degree. 

 Augustina brings a natural creativity and enthusiasm to her classes and has enjoyed the opportunity to meet with other teachers from neighboring towns. 

Director of Projects

PATRICIA TOVAR holds a PHD in Social Anthropology, with a professional interdisciplinary profile that includes the Social Communication, The Studies of the Language and the Anthropology of the Art. At the Circle of Women she has developed the project "To read with all the senses ". She designed the program, taught two indigenous teachers and supervised the instruction of 27 Mixtec woman. The method includes graphic expression and the creation of texts.
She is also a single mother of a 13 year old girl named Aurora. She feels very proud of her and thinks that it is totally possible to combine the professional vocation with a strong friendship with her daughter.
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ADVISOR

Jo Ann Feher was born in NYC and is a graduate of Hunter College. She was an elementary school teacher in Albany, NY Now a bead artist and travel agent, she lives in Seattle, WA and Oaxaca, Mexico.Long interested in the beadwork of the Maasai, and in helping indigenous women  develop a more equitable place in their society, she has organized trips to Kenya and Tanzania for cultural interchanges in remote Maasai villages. She has been involved with the projects in Miramar since November of 2007. She has been instrumental in developing a connection between the new Textile Museum, in Oaxaca, and the  Miramar projects.

ADVISOR

Judiross holds a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri (1991), and an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (1995). She is  a working artist who has taught workshops and traveled the Oaxacan region since 1995. Beginning in 2001 judiross maintained a studio /residence in the United States and Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, dividing time between teaching  at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (Assistant Professor)  and studio activities.. Other teaching experiences were at the University of Missouri at Kansas City (adjunct) and the Kansas City Art Institute (adjunct). Since June 2008 she has been living and working fulltime in Oaxaca de Juárez.

Web consultant

Bill Bennett has a Ph.D. in English from Harvard University, and is the webmaster for New England Aquarium in Boston, in addition to doing consulting work and building websites for a number of organizations including the Circle of Women.

Presidente
CIRCULO DE MUJERES

Ignacio Graf Noriega
Born in Mexico City in 1973, Nacho graduated as an architect from UNAM in 1998. By this time he had spend half a decade of practice including social housing, medical clinics and laboratories, as well as private housing developments. He moved to Oaxaca in 2005 where he designed and build La Casita, the headquarters of El Circulo de Mujeres.

He has lived in Barcelona, Spain for three years doing postgraduate courses in urbanism and urban design, public space and city management, as well as practicing with local architects. Back in Mexico he participated in the government office of the Secretary of Social Development (SEDESOL) in a federal program to promote the construction social space through the rehabilitation and construction of urban public space.

He is married to Maria Campiglia, a painter and educator.

Volunteer
Translator

Bernadette Orr has worked in a variety of professional positions over the past 20 years in the broad field of international development, mostly within philanthropic organizations and private foundations. Since her first trip to the Dominican Republic while in graduate school, serving as translator and logistics coordinator for a medical team, her particular area of interest has always been to contribute in whatever way she can to improving the lives of rural women in the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America.

"I have been touched and inspired repeatedly by the women I have met with and visited throughout the region: their warmth; their love of home and family; their selfless giving to better their communities; their desire to organize and work collaboratively for the good of all. I had the opportunity in 2004 to spend a month in Oaxaca, and have visited communities throughout the Mixteca, where the beautiful work produced by the women stands in stark contrast to the dire poverty that characterizes their everyday reality. The Women’s Circle, with its multi-faceted approach to improving these humble and hard-working women’s lives, has already helped to make a difference for them. It does this not only by bringing in desperately needed income, but by providing an opportunity for learning, for self-improvement, for increased pride that the women can take in their accomplishments.   It is really a very great pleasure for me to be contributing as a volunteer to the wonderful work of the Women’s Circle."

Project Coordinator,
Boston

Agnes Portalewska, has served as Program Officer at Cultural Survival for over six years. Her duties included running the fair trade indigenous artisan bazaar program, organizing outreach events and advocacy initiatives, fundraising and communications, and working on the Guatemala Radio Project. Agnes is from Warsaw, Poland. She studied anthropology, Latin American studies, photography, and media production at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and holds a Masters Degree in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University.

ADVISOR

Tom Feher is a Hungarian-born fine art photographer who currently divides his time between the Seattle and Oaxaca, Mexico. His work in the past has been predominantly in black and white photography and especially platinum-palladium printing, and has been exhibited primarily in galleries in the Pacific Northwest and in Mexico. His photos have also been in a number of magazines in the US and Spain. He has photographs in the permanent collection of The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, and in private collections throughout the United States.

Tom has been working with the women of Miramar since November of 2007, photographing their lives and their work. Some of his photographs will be seen at the Miramar exhibition at the Museum of Textiles in Oaxaca in November of 2009, as well as in a book about the women of Miramar expected to be published in 2010.  Examples of his work can be seen at www.tomfeherphotography.com.

OUR CIRCLE OF ADVISORS

In addition to our staff and consultants, we are fortunate to have a Board of Advisors both in Oaxaca and Boston.

CIRCULO DE MUJERES- OAXACA

Joan Anyon

Edith Espana

Mary Ann Garrett

Carlos Hernandez

Judith Lockhart-Radtke

Tom and Jo Ann Feher

Cathy Overholt

THE CIRCLE OF WOMEN - BOSTON

Myrna Balk

Susan Carman

Joan Cassidy

Anuradha Desai

Howard Kilguss

Bernadette Orr

Monica Palacio

Charles Rodgers

Lynne Rowe

Sue Whitwell

Judith Zabin