Women@Sun

Boston Area Women Celebrate w/ a Mayor and 1000+ Toiletry Items!

Sun's Boston area women wrapped up Women's History Month today in our Nashua, NH office.

We concluded a month long Toiletry Drive across our Burlington, MA and Nashua, NH locations.  The collection resulted in well over 1000+ items (shampoo, soap, toothbrushes, etc, etc, etc!) for Bridges-NH, an agency that supports victims of domestic and sexual violence.

The majority of the donated items were travel sized bottles - the kind you pick up in your hotel while on vacation or business travel.  Hotels and casinos from around the world were represented, indicating where our employees and our friends travel for business and pleasure  (it was actually fun to sort thru this stuff and think of warm places, esp. since there's still some snow on the ground here in NH!)

It also struck me that many of our employees made the extra effort to actually check their luggage to bring back stashes of collected hotel toiletries from their trips to support this effort. (Thanks everyone! The extra effort to do that is going to make a lot of struggling women happy!)

Dawn Reams, the Executive Director of Bridges-NH came to Sun's office this morning to pick up our HUGE donation and tell our employees more about Bridges-NH. 

We also had a special guest visit us! (Who also brought a bag full of toiletries to our drive!).  Mayor Donnalee Lozeau, Nashua, NH's 55th Mayor who was elected this fall, visited Sun's Nashua office for a roundtable discussion with employees.   Mayor Lozeau is part of Women's History, which is impressive for someone so young. :-)   She is the first woman Mayor in Nashua's 155+ year history and began her political career when she was in her early 20s at the NH Statehouse.  

(L-R: Dawn Reams, Bridges-NH; Mayor Donnalee Lozeau, City of Nashua; Sandy Belknap, Sun Microsystems stand in front of over 1000 boxed toiletry items destined for Bridges-NH in Sun's Nashua office.)

We had a great  discussion this morning where the Mayor shared some of her experiences and observations of the differences and similarities between the public and private sector.  I think that she even motivated some people to get more engaged in their local community activities and city/town government.   That in itself says a lot about Mayor Lozeau's inclusive and transparent leadership style.

It was quite an inspirational way to start our day!

Posted at 10:52AM Mar 27, 2008 by sandyb in Day in the Life  |  Comments[0]