Isabel Pratt

Isabel Pratt was our founder's Great Grandmother. During WW1 she and her husband lost a son, and she believed that if women had been permitted the right to vote that war would have been made obsolete. She decided to join the march for the right to vote at the White House the day before President Wilson was inaugurated. She began talking to other women and asking them to join her on the trip. But many of the suffragettes didn’t enjoy their husbands’ support and couldn’t afford the trip to Washington D.C. So she spoke at local churches and raised private funds to provide travel scholarships to women who wanted to march. In this way she and her husband and thirteen local church ladies joined a thousand others, mostly women, in the now famous March to Vote in 1913 along Pennsylvania Avenue.

Thus Isabel was the first development professional in Ellen Stimson's family, and it is her example of creative perseverance and leadership and her abiding belief in working for the public good that guides our vision here at isabelpratt