WOMEN LEAD CHANGE: Getting involved was expected
Mar. 8—Clinton Community College Assistant to the President and Paul B. Sharar Foundation Executive Director Ann Eisenman says that she's been surrounded her entire life with incredible and inspiring women.
"I feel like I've been blessed to have people that came before me and that have been part of my life and I've been blessed to know," she said. "Julie Aliesse, Karen Vickers, those people led change. I didn't lead change. I was able to follow their leadership, but I did not lead change."
Eisenman is originally from Oskaloosa. When she was in fourth grade, her mother went back to college to finish her degree and become a teacher.
"Changed the lives of second graders at Webster School in Oskaloosa for 27 years," Eisenman said.
Just next door were Eisenman's grandparents. Her grandmother, she describes as "strong, educated, well-spoken."
"I grew up with an expectation that you're involved in the community," Eisenman said. "That's how you make it a better place to live."
Early on, Eisenman had developed a commitment to taking steps each day toward accomplishing her goals.
At the University of Iowa, Eisenman earned a bachelor of business administration in finance. She began working for Shive Hattery engineers in Iowa City where she would live with her husband for a number of years and where she would give birth to her first daughter.
"I had a baby in 1989, and I thought, well, I think I'm going to run a marathon in 1990 and get back in shape," she recalled.
While Eisenman raised her daughter at home, her husband sought a new position that he found at Clinton Federal Savings and Loan in Clinton. In 1987, they moved from Iowa City to Clinton where Eisenman would have her second daughter.
When Eisenman felt ready to work again, she started part-time at Regency Retirement Resident on 13th Avenue North, then full-time with the Clinton Area Chamber of Commerce as the director of member relations and programming.
When the previous director of the Paul B. Sharar Foundation Betty Oakley retired 22 years ago, Eisenman stepped into the role carrying out with a board of over 20 members the foundation's mission to provide advisory and monetary support for students, staff, faculty, and college programs.
Eisenman is the administrator of the foundation's scholarships and sources of funding and celebrates every graduate of the college's HiSET, formerly GED, program.
Eisenman has been on The Clinton Herald's community board for many years and is a member of the Sawmill Museum's board, the First Gateway Credit Union's board of directors, the local Kiwanis club, and recently joined the Iowa State Extension board.
With the IA Nice organization, she's helped about 17 Ukrainian families to get settled in Clinton County, assisting them with the required paperwork, finding housing, getting their children enrolled in school, and helping their parents to find work.
"This is an area that we wanted the college to be a part of because the new residents often take English as a second language," Eisenman explains, referring to the English Language Acquisition, or ELA, class offered through the college.
Eisenman had made the decision to get involved after seeing a little girl on the news who was 2 years old, the same age as her granddaughter at the time.
"Her name and phone number had been written with a Sharpie on her back, because if she died or became an orphan, they needed to know who she was, and it just crushed me," she said.
"We had a Ukrainian woman who recently completed her CNA, and we were able to assist with that funding," she said. "We're really eager to help these new residents of Clinton County as they settle in and become citizens here."
Clinton Community College is currently working on also transforming the Bickelhaupt Arboretum established by Bob and Frances Bickelhaupt around their house and given to the public in 1970 into an events and education center that will draw in revenue to support the arboretum in future generations.
Having gained her inherent positivity and ambition, Eisenman's daughters are now 34 and 38 and graduates of Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa. They and Eisenman's husband also went on to complete the Ironman Triathlon.
And Eisenman, now at 63 years old, is looking forward to completing in another marathon.
