Inside the 2024 Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame Gala: What I Learned Chairing a Statewide Tribute
By Ginger Sloan, CEO, Clean Oklahoma & Encore Medical
The view from the podium
On the evening of September 27, 2024, I stood backstage at the Omni Oklahoma City Hotel, listening to the low hum of more than a thousand conversations bleeding through the ballroom doors. Crystal stemware caught the warm uplighting. The scent of late-summer florals drifted past stagehands taping down cables. Somewhere out in that sea of round tables, every honoree's family was finding their seat, every sponsor was being greeted, and a slideshow of black-and-white portraits cycled silently on the screens above the stage.
I have produced a lot of events in my career. But there is a particular weight to a room that has gathered, on purpose, to say thank you to women who have given their lives to Oklahoma. When I took on chairing the 2024 gala for the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame, I told myself the night would be about the inductees, not the logistics. The logistics, of course, are what make the night possible. This is what I learned standing between those two truths.
A 42-year tradition: why the Hall of Fame exists
The Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame was established in 1982 by Governor George Nigh. The mission was straightforward and, at the time, overdue: create a permanent, public record of the women whose work has shaped the state. Educators, public servants, philanthropists, scientists, ranchers, artists, lawyers, organizers. Women whose names rarely made the front page, but whose fingerprints are on the institutions Oklahomans rely on every day.
Forty-two years later, induction into the Hall of Fame is described as the highest honor bestowed upon a woman by the State of Oklahoma. That is not a marketing line. It is the operating standard the selection committee holds itself to every cycle. Nominations are reviewed against a body of lifetime work, not a single accomplishment, and inductees join a roster that stretches back to the early founders of the state.
Since 1994, the Hall of Fame has been administered by the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women, known as OCSW. The Commission is a state body charged with studying issues affecting Oklahoma women and girls and advising the Legislature and the Governor. Stewarding the Hall of Fame, including the annual gala, is one of its most visible responsibilities. It is also one of its most labor-intensive: the Commission's volunteer Advisory Council members spend the better part of a year preparing the ceremony, the program, the printed materials, and the inductee documentation that becomes part of the public record.
That continuity matters. When a guest walks into the Omni ballroom and sees the Hall of Fame seal on the program, they are not seeing a one-off banquet. They are seeing the 2024 chapter of a four-decade civic project that has outlasted administrations, recessions, and a pandemic.
The Class of 2024
Six women were inducted on September 27, 2024. Their full citations are part of the OCSW record, and I would encourage anyone reading this to look up the long-form biographies the Commission has published. The short version below is meant only to put names on the page in the order I had the privilege of introducing them.
Nancy Anthony.
Marilyn Maurer Hugon.
Edie Roodman.
Jane Semple Umsted.
Crystal Stovall.
Molly Wehrenberg.
What struck me, sitting with their nomination packets in the weeks leading up to the gala, was how little overlap there was in how these six women built their lives, and how much overlap there was in why. Different industries, different corners of the state, different decades of peak influence. The same instinct toward the long, unglamorous work of making a place better than they found it.
What chairing a statewide gala actually involves
People who have not produced a benefit event tend to imagine the chair as someone who picks the centerpieces and gives a toast. The centerpieces and the toast are real, but they are roughly two percent of the job. The other ninety-eight percent is structure.
The first conversation is always about sponsorship architecture. For the 2024 gala, the tiers were Presenting at $25,000, Kate Barnard at $15,000, Guardian at $15,000, Sapphire at $10,000, Onyx at $5,000, and Pearl at $2,500. Each tier carried a defined set of benefits, table placements, and recognition. A gala chair's first task is making sure those tiers are calibrated to the room you want in seats: enough top-line capacity to underwrite the production, enough accessible entry points that civic organizations and small firms can show up too. A ceremony that only the largest corporations can afford to attend has stopped being a public honor.
From there it is a parallel-track project plan. Venue contracting with the Omni, AV and stage design, run-of-show, security and ADA flow, printed program editing, slideshow production, plated dinner choreography for a thousand-plus guests, inductee family hosting, press and photography access, post-event archive materials for the Commission, and a thank-you cadence that runs for weeks after the lights come down. Each of those tracks has a lead, a budget, and a deadline. The chair's job is to make sure no track quietly falls behind while everyone is admiring the other five.
The reason I say this out loud is that women who consider chairing an event like this often underestimate themselves. If you have ever managed a department, run a small business, or coordinated a complex family, you already have the instincts. What you need is a strong Commission staff and Advisory Council partnership, which, in 2024, I was lucky to have.
About the Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women
The Oklahoma Commission on the Status of Women was created in 1994 and operates as a state advisory body. Its statutory charge is to examine issues that affect the economic, educational, health, and civic status of women and girls in Oklahoma, and to make recommendations to the Governor and the Legislature. In practice, that means OCSW commissions studies, convenes working groups, publishes reports, and serves as the institutional home for projects like the Hall of Fame.
The Commission is governed by appointed commissioners and supported by a volunteer Advisory Council made up of Oklahomans from across the state. For Fiscal Year 2024-25, the Advisory Council Chair is Jana Gridley of Claims Management Resources in Edmond, with Julie Dermody of the Rogers County Election Board serving as Secretary. Jana's leadership through the 2024 gala cycle was, candidly, the spine of the operation. The Council members who chaired sub-committees on program, sponsorship, inductee liaison, and venue worked unpaid, on top of full-time careers, for the better part of a year.
If you live in Oklahoma and you have ever wondered where the quiet, structural work on women's policy happens between election cycles, OCSW is one of the most direct answers. It does not have the budget of a federal agency or the megaphone of a national nonprofit. It has commissioners, a small staff, an Advisory Council, and a forty-plus-year track record of taking the work seriously.
What I would ask of you
If this post has done its job, you are thinking about a woman in your life who has shaped your community in ways the public record has not caught up with. The single most useful thing you can do with that thought is submit her name. Nominations for the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame are open to the public, and the Commission publishes the nomination form, criteria, and deadline on its official site each cycle. The selection process is rigorous on purpose. Your nomination may not result in induction in year one, but a strong nomination becomes part of the permanent file the committee revisits.
If you represent a company or foundation, consider the 2025 sponsorship tiers when they open. The Pearl level at $2,500 is designed precisely for small businesses and civic organizations that want to be in the room. Sponsorship is what allows OCSW to keep ticket prices accessible for the inductees' families, students, and educators who should not be priced out of a state honor.
And if you have civic energy looking for a home, the Advisory Council periodically opens applications. The work is unpaid and meaningful in roughly equal measure.
Closing
I will remember the September 27, 2024 ballroom for a long time: the hush when the first inductee's video began, the standing ovation that found its rhythm before the emcee finished the citation, the families holding phones up with shaking hands. Chairing a gala is, in the end, a small contribution to a much larger tradition. The honor belongs to the six women whose names are now in the record, and to the women before them whose shoulders that record stands on.
Thank you to OCSW, to Jana Gridley and the Advisory Council, to the Omni team, to every sponsor at every tier, and to the readers who will turn this evening's tribute into next year's nomination.