International Women's Day 2026 Ascending Women

Join us for our 2026 International Women's Day Ascending Women Panel!

Ascending Women is an event series featuring strong, inspiring women who have overcome big challenges. It's an opportunity to connect, learn from, and grow with each other.

Rachel DesRochers of Power to Pursue and Rhiannon Hoeweler of MadTree are excited to bring you the next edition of Ascending Women. This monthly event series is dedicated to featuring strong, inspiring women who have overcome challenges and continue to drive change in their communities.

Join us Sunday, March 1st at the Oakley Taproom for a thoughtful panel discussion featuring women leaders and creatives sharing their perspectives, experiences, and insights around growth, creativity, and community. Doors open at 8:45am and the panel will run from 9:00am - 10:00am. The panel will seamlessly lead into the MakeHer’s Market, 10:00am - 2:00pm, making it the perfect way to start your morning with intention before exploring local women-owned businesses.

This Ascending Women event will focus on A Celebration of Women Poets

This panel will include:

• Holly Brians Ragusa President for Ohio Poetry Association 

• Whitney Ellison Attorney & Author

• Yalie Saweda Kamara 2025 Ohio Poet of the Year

Panelists -

Holly Brians Ragusa 

Holly is an interdisciplinary writer, poet, speaker, activist and author serving as President for Ohio Poetry Association. HBR champions literary endeavors, human rights and survivorship and is entrenched in the community; she lives with her family in historic Over-the-Rhine. hollybriansragusa.com

Whitney Ellison

Whitney Ellison is an attorney focused on probate and estate planning. She practices at Belle Legal, a woman-owned and woman-run law firm in Madeira, Ohio. Whitney earned her J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College of Law and her B.A. from the University of Oklahoma.

At the heart of her work is guiding people through seasons of transition—particularly after the loss of a loved one. She helps clients administer probate and trust estates with care and clarity, and she partners with individuals and families on thoughtful estate planning, including trusts, wills, health care directives, and powers of attorney. Her approach is grounded in both precision and compassion, recognizing that legal work is often deeply personal.

Outside of the practice of law, Whitney is a published writer, speaker, and poet. Creativity and compassion are her core values, and writing, poetry, and public speaking are the ways she brings those values into the world. She is married with three awesome kids, an avid napper, and also loves strength training, Pilates and yoga. She is shamelessly obsessed with her three wily Boston Terriers.

As of January 2026, Whitney is proud to announce that she is a newly minted Board Member of the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, serves as the Administrative Board Chair of her church in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, and volunteers monthly as a lawyer with Project Connect through Cincinnati Public Schools.

Yalie Saweda Kamara

Yalie is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, researcher, and educator from Oakland, Ca. She is the Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate Emerita and the 2025 Ohio Poet of the Year. Her debut poetry collection, Besaydoo (Milkweed Editions, 2024), was the winner of the 2022-2023 Jake Adam York Prize and is the winner of the 2025 Ohio Book Award in Poetry. She is also the editor of the anthology What You Need to Know About Me: Young Writers on Their Experience of Immigration (The Hawkins Project, 2022). Among her honors, Kamara has received fellowships from Academy of American Poets and the National Book Critics Circle and received residencies from the  Sewanee Writers Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, Djerassi, and Smith College. Kamara earned a PhD in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University. An assistant professor of English at Xavier University, she teaches courses in global and diasporic literature, creative writing, and hip-hop studies. For more, please visit her website: www.yaylala.com

Join us at MadTree Taproom - Oakley in the Barrel Room on Sunday, March 1st from 9:00am - 10:00am

Moderated by Rhiannon Hoeweler - MadTree Brewing Co.

Proudly presented by Amend Consulting LLC & Burke.

In partnership with Power to Pursue.