South Jersey Superwomen
South Jersey Magazine
By Christina Hernandez
November 2009
Name: Nan Ivins
Job: Singer/Songwriter
Home base: Deptford
Why she’s a Superwoman: After raising three children, including a son with autism, and leaving a troubled relationship, Ivins has recorded her first full-length album and is donating a portion of the proceeds to charity.
How she keeps her life in balance: Finding time to relax, and using music and yoga as creative, therapeutic outlets.
After ending what she describes as an abusive relationship, Ivins made it her mission to tackle two life goals: share her music and write a book about her childhood. This year, Ivins crossed the first achievement off her list with the release of her full-length album, Inside Looking Out. “Women really need to know that you don’t have to give up your dreams just because things come at you,” she says.
Ivins, 46, began writing songs in her teens after teaching herself to play acoustic guitar as accompaniment to the poetry she had written since childhood. “It’s all about wanting to share an emotion,” she says of her music. Behind rock beats, Ivins’ songs reflect what is happening in her life, from breaking off a relationship to dealing with anger to finding love again. Along with performing her music and covering songs by the likes of Sheryl Crow and Melissa Etheridge, Ivins hosts local acoustic concerts, singer/songwriter showcases and open-mic nights.
Ivins’ 18-year-old son, her youngest child, has autism. While she already advocates for people with disabilities, Ivins has pledged even more help: Through March 2010, she plans to donate the profits from her CD and song downloads to the Arc Gloucester’s Camp Sun ’N Fun in Williamstown, a camp for kids with special needs that her son attends. “I just had this overwhelming desire to help them,” she says.
Name: Maria Rosado
Job: Professor of Anthropology, Rowan University
Home base: Mullica Hil
Why she’s a Superwoman: In addition to raising two children, Rosado is the co-instructor of an innovative Rowan anthropology course that’s known as “Rowan CSI”. She also travels regularly with students to study in Chile.
How she keeps her life in balance: Calling on her ace time-management skills and relying on a network of supportive family members, friends and colleagues who keep her grounded.
On the application for Rowan’s highest faculty honor, the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award, which she won last year, Rosado wrote about her favorite professional achievement: “That moment when you’re there with students and . . . the light bulb goes [on].”
Rosado chases that moment in a forensic anthropology course nicknamed “Rowan CSI,” which she teaches with Diane Markowitz. After studying the body and its bones, students are sent to identify a model skeleton buried near campus. Though the “murder scene” is professor-devised, Rosado’s efforts are educating anthropologists-in-training and future medical doctors. “We’re educating people, and it should be taken very seriously,” she says. “But [learning] also should be fun.” She regularly breaks out of the classroom to travel with her students to her native Chile, where they spend weeks studying remains of the country’s indigenous people. Under Rosado’s tutelage, the students later present their findings at professional conferences.
Rosado attributes much of her success to her family—the parents who instilled in her a love of learning; her husband, Victor, an aircraft technician who helped support her while she earned three advanced degrees from Rutgers; her son and young daughter. “It’s possible to be able to do all this when you have a support system,” Rosado says. “And when we are home, it’s family first.”
Name: Jessica Doheny
Job: Actress
Home base: Wenonah
Why she’s a Superwoman: Along with performing in theater productions throughout South Jersey and, as her day job, acting as company manager and assistant to the managing director at the Walnut Street Theatre, Doheny teaches acting classes, directs local shows and sings in her church choir.
How she keeps her life in balance: Playing in a tennis league proves a stress reliever and gives her a break from work and performance obligations.
If you’re a connoisseur of live theater in South Jersey, take a good look at Doheny’s headshot. You’re likely to recognize her as Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest, Kate McGowan in Titanic: The Musical, or Lt. Cdr. JoAnne Galloway in A Few Good Men. An actress since her days at Gateway Regional High School in Woodbury Heights, Doheny has performed at venues throughout the region, including the Ritz Theatre in Oaklyn and with the Road Company Theater Group in Williamstown, where she starred in one of her favorite roles, Sally Bowles in Cabaret. The mezzo-soprano’s also a director, first taking the reins with a Haddonfield Plays and Players staging of Annie.
In 1995, Doheny met her husband, Michael, a high school music teacher, in a summer theater production of Guys and Dolls at Bethel Mill Park in Sewell. The couple now performs side by side whenever possible. For the past two years, they have appeared together in Cape May in Temperance Tantrums, a farcical musical piece.
Doheny’s day job at the Walnut Street Theatre has her playing something of a jack-of-all-trades, doing event planning, employee relations and more. Though she sometimes goes on-stage as an understudy there and has taught theatre school classes, Doheny’s work at the Walnut tends to require skills more along the lines of contract writing than belting to the balcony. But it all helps prepare her to achieve a long-term goal. “Ultimately,” she says, “I would love to manage my own theater.”
Name: Patricia Pearlman
Job: Founder and coordinator, Clare’s Cupboard
Home base: Cherry Hill
Why she’s a Superwoman: On top of her work as a staff nurse at Cooper University Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, Pearlman launched Clare’s Cupboard, a program that raises money to provide needy families with basic baby supplies.
How she keeps her life in balance: Prioritizing. “I always remember that I am my husband’s only wife and my children’s only mother,” she says.
It was Christmas season in 2007 when Pearlman, a Cooper nurse for 21 years, received a call from a couple who had been regularly donating to needy babies since their own daughter, Clare, was born premature a decade earlier. Having recently moved to the region, the family, who wished to remain anonymous, decided to help babies delivered at Cooper. “This is just a wonderful sort of pay-it-forward scenario,” Pearlman says. The family donated $500, which purchased supplies for the newborn of a teenage couple from Cape May.
Inspired by that generosity and convinced others would donate to the cause, Pearlman launched Clare’s Cupboard, a program that raises money to provide needy families with baby supplies, including cribs, clothes and diapers. In fewer than two years, the charity has raised more than $30,000, including a $10,000 donation last year from the Moorestown Auxiliary, and helped more than 60 South Jersey families in need.
Pearlman—whose own son was born premature two decades ago—says the responses she receives from recipients of Clare’s Cupboard donations give her the greatest sense of accomplishment. “Every baby deserves the best shot they can get,” says Pearlman. “I want to make sure we can give them a healthy beginning.”
Ellen Healey
Founder, Gleneayre Equestrian Program, Lumberton
When a child experiences a life challenge—be it a social struggle or an academic difficulty—Ellen Healey’s advice is simple: get back in the saddle. Her 15-year-old equestrian program pairs struggling children and teens with a horse from her family’s Lumberton farm. “A child who may be used to quitting when something doesn’t work the first time may be willing to try over and over and over again when they’re with a horse,” she says. Most participants visit the farm six days a week, ride their horses, shovel manure, wash barn windows, and set up feed at mealtimes. Tutors are provided for some participants, many of whom have learning disabilities. The labor, Healey says, helps encourage children facing life’s difficult moments to work through their struggles. Despite facing challenges, the dozen or so graduates of her program have stayed out of trouble with the law, gone on to higher education, and become engaged citizens.
Elizabeth Broderick
Nurse, Taunton Forge Elementary School
Last year Broderick, nurse at the Medford elementary school for 15 years, went beyond tending to the skinned knees and sniffles of her students. Inspired by accounts detailing the need for clean water in Sudan, Broderick led a district-wide effort to raise funds to build a well in the African nation. The nine-month effort garnered about $6,500—more than enough to build a well—and earned Broderick the district’s 2009 Humanitarian of the Year award.
Laura Cheadle
Singer/Songwriter
From performing in her father’s choir for Persian Gulf War troops when she was 4, to teaching herself to play guitar at age 16, Cheadle has spent her life surrounded by music. Now the 23-year-old singer/songwriter is planning a national tour to promote her fourth album, Live On, which was released this year. Cheadle, who grew up in Pitman and now lives in Swedesboro, makes time for charity work, playing benefit concerts and performing for patients at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
