OL Reign Legends: Tacoma Women of Color Collective – Krista Perez, Leah Ford, Benita Smith and Melo Hogan
The Legends Campaign, a partnership between OL Reign and Starbucks, honors women for their extraordinary contributions to our community in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Prior to the August 7 match against the Houston Dash, OL Reign recognized the women behind the Tacoma Women of Color Collective for the incredible work they are doing in the Tacoma community.
The Tacoma Women of Color Collective works day in and day out to cultivate a space for professional Women of Color to collaborate and share professional, educational, and life resources. These women nurture a community where professional Women of Color can be themselves and embrace their ambitions and goals. They allow women to show up whole, as the multi-dimensional and intersectional human beings that they are. Most importantly, this is an organization build by Women of Color for Women of Color, working towards bettering the Tacoma community through prioritizing anti-racist, equitable and community centered work.
“A common thread in all of my motivation and experiences is a passion for engaging my community,” said President of TWCC, Krista Perez. “That really started when I had my own mobile kitchen when I was 20 years old in Kalispell, Montana. I was really young to be running a business, so it was a meaningful experience for me. It was also impactful to the community because there were no other mobile kitchens in the area, and I got to see the power of creating community. Over the years I’ve moved quite a bit and everywhere I moved I’ve always desired to belong. Deep down, everyone desires a sense of belonging, so I always try to create that sense of belonging.”
For Perez, the desire to create a sense of belonging for Women of Color everywhere brought about the TWCC. She saw the opportunity to help others find the feeling she found herself searching for, so the non-profit organization was born.
In her own words. Perez describes the TWCC as “a place to connect with other Women of Color and to access resources for Women of Color. Also, it’s a place to just really build community together. As women, especially Women of Color, we create something amazing. The most powerful testament of the TWCC is that we have come together, and we have created this organization and resources out of literally nothing. We had no money, no anything when we started the nonprofit.”
Perez has worked hard to build the TWCC, along with the amazing Women of Color on the board of the organization. Starting the TWCC was no easy feat, so Perez offered some advice to young women who may want to pursue a dream in a field that they are underrepresented in.
“One reason I started the TWCC is because I was not able to get a job here. No one was hiring me. My advice would be to pinpoint what your own unique value is. What is unique about you that you bring to the table?” She continued, “Second, build relationships. Build relationships in the community or the field you want to go into. There are so many ways to build relationships with folks and show them your value. But also, you need to ask yourself if you want to work in a place where you are severely underrepresented? That’s a real question to consider.”
“For me, being honored as an OL Reign Legend is a big deal. I played soccer all the way through community college and then in adult leagues, so soccer is a really a big deal for me. Having a team like OL Reign in Tacoma really helps our sense of identity and belonging in the city. Especially when the team uses their voice to institute change in the community. I think that is something we can be really proud of, especially when we are outside of Tacoma and in other states and countries,” said Perez.
For TWCC, community support is especially important. There are opportunities to get involved in the organization as a volunteer and to share their events and messaging with your own community. To get involved, check out TWCC’s website, where you can see what they have going on, as well as subscribe to their newsletter to stay in the loop. One of the simplest ways to help organizations like TWCC is to reshare their information on social media. You can find TWCC on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Perez reflected on how to be an ally to Women of Color, “It is so important to educate yourself. Do not ask Women of Color to provide more labor for you. Do that work. Once you have educated yourself and started that journey of doing the work for yourself, find organizing, causes and efforts that you can contribute to, but please don’t ask for acknowledgement or recognition for it. Just do it. Last, you need to find ways to support women of color financially. Whether that buying from our businesses and shops or something else. That really makes a big difference because women of color are not invested in same way that other women are.”
“For us at TWCC, it’s just a big deal to be recognized for the work that we are doing because it is often times thankless work. It’s the same for all our board members. Part of this is that we are used to not being recognized in other spaces. We work really hard to do really great work in the community and are so thankful to be recognized, said Parez.” “At first we had a moment where it was like ‘wait… they’re recognizing us?’ but then we were like, ‘you know what… yeah, they are recognizing us and that’s really cool!’”