Alison Pollock | YWCA Women of Excellence
TK: What inspires you?
ALISON: My friends. I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by a group of strong and supportive women who also happen to be insanely smart and hilarious. They volunteer and serve on non-profit boards, and generally make their communities better just by being in them. They're compassionate and confident, and even though we give each other a hard time, we're also each other's biggest cheerleaders. Oftentimes when I get nervous or anxious about something I have to do, I think about how one of them would handle the situation and try to channel their confidence.
TK: What have you learned about yourself through the challenges of the past year and a half?
ALISON: I learned I can bake a mean loaf of bread, but honestly, who didn't learn that? Aside from that, I learned that I'm more adaptable than I previously thought. I've always considered myself averse to change, but pretty much everything changed so suddenly that I didn't have much choice. I can't say it was easy, but I adapted to working from home, and my friends and I adapted to Zoom get togethers.
TK: How do you take care of yourself?
ALISON: In my free time, I like to engage in creative endeavors such as baking, cross-stitch, and painting. My job as an attorney doesn't afford me much creativity, so it's a great way for me to use a different part of my brain and unwind. I also enjoy listening to true crime podcasts, but that doesn't help me unwind as much. My husband says it makes me jumpy, but I think that's partly his fault for constantly sneaking up on me.
TK: What is the best advice you've ever been given? Or what advice do you have for others?
ALISON: The best advice I've ever been given is to never be afraid to ask questions. I've always been terrified of looking like a dummy in front of a group of people, but I got over that pretty quickly when I started at Security Benefit in an entirely new field of practice and discovered it wasn't humanly possible to Google every single acronym I heard in a meeting. Plus, if you have a question, odds are at least one other person in the room has the same question.
TK: What is your vision for our community? Has it changed through the pandemic and racial justice reckoning of 2020?
ALISON: My vision for the Topeka community has always been that it will be a place that young professionals want to live and work. I came here for law school in 2009 and ended up staying because I found a job, and Topeka has really grown on me. It's been great to see the investment local business owners have made in the community, and my hope is that Topeka will continue to grow and improve.
TK: The mission of YWCA is to eliminate racism, empower women and promote peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all. What does YWCA's mission mean to you?
ALISON: To me, the mission of the YWCA means being a little bit uncomfortable. There's a status quo that benefits men to the detriment of women, white people to the detriment of non-white people, abled people to the detriment of disabled people, and so on. A lot of people in the group that benefits don't question how they got there and don't think anything needs to change. However, in order to achieve the YWCA's mission, we have to accept the fact that we benefitted because others were harmed, no matter how uncomfortable that may make us. Instead of getting defensive, we have to decide we want change.
The YWCA is on a mission to empower women at all stages in their careers. Diversity in leadership is particularly vital to our vibrant business community in the Greater Topeka Area.
