Build Missouri Health - St. Louis, MO

Women Work Well Joins BMH as New Fiscally-Sponsored Project

At Build Missouri Health, we partner with innovators working to address complex challenges and create new pathways to health, opportunity, and well-being. We're excited to welcome Women Work Well as a new fiscally-sponsored project and support its efforts to better understand what helps women thrive in the workplace.

"We're interested in supporting community-led innovations beyond health care that help us better understand and address the conditions that shape health and opportunity," said Jasmine Hall Ratliff, Executive Director of Build Missouri Health. "Women Work Well brings a thoughtful, research-informed approach to an issue that affects women, families, employers, and communities across Missouri."

Founded by Dr. Desiree Coleman-Fry, Women Work Well emerged from a decade of corporate experience, personal reflection, and a deep curiosity about the factors that shape women's success and well-being at work.

"My daughters are honestly ‘my why’ and a lot of my motivation. I want to build a brighter future for them," Dr. Coleman-Fry said.
Drawing on her work across the nonprofit, corporate, and public sectors, Dr. Coleman-Fry explored how workplace systems impact women's opportunities, leadership journeys, and overall well-being.Along the way, she found herself asking a simple but powerful question: What does it take for women to work well?
That question eventually became the foundation for Women Work Well.

"The core mission of Women Work Well is to help women earn more and advance further," said Dr. Coleman-Fry.

Women Work Well® helps women, employers, communities, and systems create the conditions for women to achieve lasting economic mobility. Through direct coaching service for women , community partnerships, and thought leadership, the organization seeks to break down the barriers that stand in the way women’s professional advancement. They do this through workplace culture consulting and leadership coaching and community listening sessions that co-designs solutions alongside women leaders. In this way, Women Work Well prioritizes economic mobility and the systems that shape women’s experiences.

The organization is also intentionally focused on collaboration.

"Our guiding belief is that women achieve sustained economic mobility through personal empowerment, equitable civic infrastructure, flexible and inclusive workplaces, and coordinated community networks. Women Work Well is not on an island and it does not compete. We are a part of an ecosystem working to better community conditions," Dr. Coleman-Fry said.

Like many of the organizations we support, Women Work Well recognizes that lasting change happens when organizations, communities, and partners work together. Therefore, their goal is not to create a single program that solves every challenge, but rather to contribute to a broader network of efforts that help women, families, workplaces, and communities thrive.

As a fiscally-sponsored project of Build Missouri Health, Women Work Well can focus on serving women and partnering with employers, while leveraging the infrastructure, operational support, and partnership needed to strengthen and sustain the work over time.

For Dr. Coleman-Fry, the partnership creates an opportunity to focus more energy on advancing the mission. For Build Missouri Health, it represents another opportunity to address aspects of health equity that go beyond health care, such as work attainment and income, that have the potential to create meaningful impact across Missouri.

Looking ahead, Women Work Well will continue engaging women, building partnerships, and developing strategies that help create better outcomes for women in the workplace and beyond.

"At the community-level, we have the ability to design systems that actually benefit everyone. I welcome the opportunity to collaborate with any individual or organization interested in furthering that vision," Dr. Coleman-Fry said.

We're excited to support Women Work Well's next chapter and look forward to sharing more about its work in the months ahead.

To learn more about Women Work Well and opportunities to support its mission, visit www.womenworkwell.co