Oral History Program Sara Toliver Interviewed by Sarah Taylor 28 May 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Sara Toliver Interviewed by Sarah Taylor 28 May 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Toliver, Sara,an oral history by Sarah Taylor, 28 May 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Sara Toliver Circa 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Sara Toliver, conducted on May 28, 2019, in Ogden, Utah, by Sarah Taylor. Sara discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Alyssa Dove, the video technician, is also present during this interview. SST: It is Tuesday, May 28, 2019. The time is 9:55 am and we are in Sara’s office and this is Sara Toliver. I am Sarah Taylor and Alyssa Dove is assisting us on technology. This is for the Women’s 2020 like Suffrage Exhibit. So, first off, thank you for agreeing to do this and for giving us your time. We really appreciate it. ST: Thank you for asking. SST: Alright, why don’t we start with where and when you were born? ST: I was born in Sacramento, California, in September of 1976. SST: Okay. And who were your parents? ST: Jo Packham and Scott Buehler. SST: Alright and is there anything that you can remember about your childhood that stuck out to you? ST: That’s a big question. We actually moved back to Ogden when I was right around one year old. Just under it, I think. So my childhood memories are of growing up in this community. We lived behind the Dee Events Center, so I have lots of childhood memories of literally running free in the foothills, setting up forts 2 with my friends, running around the neighborhood and all the things I wish my kids got more of now. When I think back on my childhood, those are the big memories that stick out to me, taking picnics up into the foothills and just exploring the mountains. SST: That sounds like a really nice childhood. ST: It was wonderful. SST: Where did you go to elementary? ST: I went to Wasatch Elementary here in Ogden. SST: Okay. How about junior high? ST: I was a product of the Ogden School District all the way through. So Mount Ogden, it was middle school at that time, then Ogden High School. SST: Alright. When you were a young girl, who were some of the women you looked up to and why? ST: I think, probably first and foremost, my mom. My parents divorced when I was in elementary school and we, my younger brother and I, lived with my mom two weeks out of the month and my dad two weeks out of the month. My mom was an entrepreneur, a business owner, and watching her juggle her business and raising a family and all of those challenges. I watched her experience success but also times of not being successful, and watching her literally pick herself up and start over. Her drive and passion and dedication for what she believed in and what she did. A lot of moms hopefully tell their kids, “You know, you can do 3 anything you want.” But she really tried to drive home that, as a woman, in business and in life. She would tell me that I had every opportunity as long as I was willing to work hard for it. So I would say my number one role model and definite inspiration in my childhood was my mom. SST: That’s really nice. Was that kind of influential for you going into business? ST: I don’t know. It’s funny. My dad is an attorney, and when I was growing up, that’s what I thought I wanted to do, go to law school and become an attorney. I went to Utah State for my undergraduate degree and when I was a freshman, I took a number of political science classes and decided very quickly that that wasn’t actually something I wanted to do. So, as I moved through school, I really struggled with what it was I wanted to do. I wound up choosing business administration as my degree because I figured it was a really good foundation for whatever career path I would eventually choose, that you needed that knowledge in so many fields regardless. So, I got my degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing. Because I did like the creative side of it, which has, interestingly enough, been part of what has shaped me over the years. My mom’s business and personality is very creative, very free flowing. My dad is much more structured, type A personality, and I’ve always joked that I got equal measure of both, which conflicts a lot of the time, but also gives me a great opportunity to find different passions. 4 So business administration with an emphasis in marketing… after I graduated, I went to work for a medical device company in Salt Lake in their marketing department. I found out that I loved not only the marketing side, but also the project management or more organized and detailed side of our department as well. So, I think that it just kind of went from there. As most career paths do, it took on a life of its own over time, and one thing lead to another. AD: Were you encouraged to pursue an education? To go to college? ST: Yes, education was incredibly important to both of my parents. My dad was the first one on his side of the family to receive a degree and an advanced degree, [a] law degree, as well. My mom felt really strongly about it. She and my dad were married young. It was this kind of stereotypical situation where she worked while she put my dad through school then she went back and got her degree. It was also really important for her. There was never a question whether my brother and I were going to college or not. That was just part of the deal. It was also very important to my mom that I went out of state to college, to just get a bigger, broader, experience. We were fortunate enough to travel a lot, but to live someplace else, a different environment. As I mentioned, I went to Utah State, so she wasn't super happy with me in the beginning, but it all worked out just fine. AD: Why wasn't she super happy? ST: I think because she had what she considered a very non-traditional college experience, because she was married when she went back. She was a little bit older. Just didn't have the college life so to speak, and it was really important for 5 her that my brother and I had the chance to experience that. She just felt like getting out of Utah—It wasn't anything about Utah—just expanding our horizons a little bit more and experiencing a different culture and a different environment. To have that true, college experience that existed in her mind. I wound up receiving a full-ride, presidential leadership council scholarship to Utah State, which was a great opportunity and she eventually came around, but I still tease her about that. And my brother actually went to Utah State as well. I spent my junior year at Colorado State on an exchange program, so I got a little snippet of it in there. AD: I think that's excellent. Were you part of any clubs and organizations during high school or college? ST: I was. It's been important to me to be involved, even when I was in school. I feel that way now about my community. I tell my kids all of the time, my junior high and high school years were a lesson in that kind of resilience I was talking about with my mom. Because I tried out for everything and never made anything, but was always still really involved. I ran for student government in high school. I tried out for cheerleader and ran for student government ever year and didn't make any of it. I wasn't an athlete, but all of my friends were, so as the way to be involved, I kept score for their teams. This very important role (joking). But it let me travel with them to their games and I felt included in being part of that team, even though I wasn't a player on any of the teams. My senior year, again, I ran for student body officer and didn't make it. Then I ran for senior class president 6 and finally, after all of those years—I just think nobody else wanted to plan the reunions. So, that was my role and I loved it. I really did and I feel like it opened the door. It is one of the things that allowed me to apply for that scholarship at Utah State. They looked at me a little bit incredulously when I was explaining all these different attempts I made at being in leadership roles that hadn't succeeded. I think that that resilience is a really important factor as well. Then in college, the scholarship that I had was actually a council you served on for four years—president’s leadership council—so we had different roles and responsibilities each year. They're the group that serve as ambassadors when high school students come up to explore the college. They give tours, that was our responsibilities our sophomore year. There were different roles each year, so that was amazing. I really, really enjoyed that. It allowed me to get involved in a lot of different things. I was also a part of a sorority. I just had great experiences throughout school all together. AD: That's really neat. SST: Yes. What were some of the challenges you faced when you were trying to obtain your degree? Maybe professionally or personally? ST: I think maybe one of the biggest challenges was I have always been a really organized person and a planner. I like my lists, and I like to check things off and I think for me personally, it was just that having believed for so long I was going to be on one kind of career path or trajectory through school, and then realizing pretty early that that was not the right path for me, but not having a clear idea of 7 what was. That was really hard for me. I like to plan; I like to have a lot of knowns. So to let that take its course, and [have] my career as a result, was really challenging for me. But, other than that, I mean, obviously I had a lot of classes that were difficult. I had a lot that I really loved. I think probably the rest of them were just the primary challenges that every college student faces. Not enough sleep, and lots of homework. AD: How did you overcome your fear of the unknown? ST: I would probably say that I have not overcome that. I think a lot of those personality traits just are deep within your soul, and that is one of mine. I like to control; I try not to be super controlling, but I like to be in control of my environment and know that I am not afraid to work really hard and so most things, if you're willing to put in the time and the effort and the desire and the passion for something, you can make things happen. That's not always the case, and that's really challenging. But I think that I have, as I've gotten older and had kids and understand that you don't get to control everything, relaxed a bit on that. I find a lot of peace in being outside and being in the mountains, so those are my places to do my form of meditation. I love hiking and trail running and all of those things. And it just lets me work things out, or let it go a bit. But I will say it's definitely always still something that I work towards or work on, or what keeps me up at night is those uncontrollable factors. SST: You said that you had children, how many do you have? ST: I have twins. I have a boy and a girl who are fourteen now. AD: Wow. 8 SST: Congrats. ST: So there's no control. I lost it fourteen years ago, yes. AD: Anyway, I'm just curious of what you think about this. Do you think that the role of a mother has changed since...? ST: Wow that's a good question. I don't think the role of a mother has changed. I think that people are more open minded about knowing that that role of being a mom can look a number of different ways. Hopefully our world becomes more accepting of moms in various shapes and forms. Whether you're a working mom or a stay-at-home mom, or you work from home mom, or a part-time mom with divorce—I mean, there's just so many; there's no consistency anymore. I do think that it is still one of the most challenging roles ever because you hear the work-life balance catch phrase which is not a real thing. I had a good friend say to me that there's no such thing as balance; there's just harmony. You have to realize that sometimes that scale looks different. That you have to give more to work and your family will be okay. Then other times, you have to give more to your family and work will be okay and it shifts minute by minute or day by day or month by month. It just depends. But I think that we're making things harder on ourselves too because in our fast paced world we are always connected. You're working when you're home, and your kids are incredibly busy and you're trying to keep up with their schedules too, so we're creating more challenges on that balance or harmony scale. But, I feel like, for me, being a mom and having the career I have, I wouldn't trade any of it for anything. AD: That's really cool. So the balance is a myth, but the harmony is the reality. 9 ST: It's something we work for on a continual basis. AD: And how do you try and find that harmony between family and work? ST: It was very important to me, and I know not everybody has this option so I say that with a grain of salt, but it was important to me to have a career that had enough flexibility that I felt like I could be where I needed to be when. I can't remember the last time I put in a 40 hour week. It's always way more than that. But, at the same time, I can leave for my son's tennis tournament or my daughter's dance recital, and I want everybody that works with me, to have that same ability to try to achieve that harmony as well. So we try to be pretty flexible. As long as you're working hard and doing what you need to do, those times you need to go to parent teacher conference or your kid’s having a really terrible day and you just need to be Mom, then you have those options to do that. Ever since I’ve had my kids, that has always been something that has guided me on where I have chosen to go from a professional standpoint. AD: Very cool. So me and Lorrie, she works at the library. We interviewed your mother. ST: Okay. AD: And super fun lady. But we wanted to get your side. So she talked a little bit about the time when you and her worked together on 25th street. What was it like from your side about working with your mom? ST: When you have the benefit of hindsight, right? Looking back, it was one of the best choices I ever made. Because it was one of those pivot points that really changed the trajectory of what I wanted to do professionally and how I wanted to 10 be involved. When I did go to work with her, I had been working down in Salt Lake as I mentioned. My husband has a business here, so we were living in Ogden and I was commuting down, and it was pre-Olympic construction and a nightmare, and the commute got to be too much. At the time, there really weren't a lot of career opportunities in the Ogden area. My mom had her publishing business and said she needed some help on the marketing and PR side of things. I really honestly did not want to come back to Ogden. I was trying to convince my husband to move to Salt Lake. We were going back and forth on that. I just felt like there was a lot more opportunity professionally for me down there. But, I took the leap and came back and all of the sudden this snowball just started. I was doing the marketing and PR for her publishing company. The owners of the building had been trying to sell the building that she was running her business out of to her for years. We finally agreed to buy it. I'm sure you've heard all of this from her, but as we were talking through it, there was this space on the ground floor that she wasn't using for the publishing company and we decided to open a retail store because she was buying all of these props for photography and was literally either giving them away or donating them or garage selling them and we thought, "It could be a lot more effective and support each other's business if she could use the inventory from the store for props because then she'd have more options and they would be changing more frequently and/or we could sell the props as inventory in the store." 11 So, I was still doing the marketing and PR for Chappelle, the Publishing Company, and running the retail store, and she had the foresight to say, "The street is going to be something..." I mean, really at that point 25th street was a place people didn't want to come down to. There were a couple of restaurants, couple of stores that would kind of come and go, but no vibrancy or life down on the street at all. A lot of boarded up buildings. I think the retail store was really kind of that catalyst to say, "Well we need people to come down here, so what are we going to do?" With her spearheading it, we “joined forces,” so to speak, with the couple of restaurant owners: Kym Buttshardt who owns Rooster's, and Todd Ferrario who owned Bistro 258 at the time, and Heidi Harwood who owns the City Club and Brewskis, and the five of us really set out to start a 25th street business association and try to make the street more vibrant. Mayor Godfrey was the mayor at the time, and we started pushing him for some support downtown. The restaurant owners put cash in and we had graphic designers on staff so we would make the ads, and it was just this really greater-good collaborative effort of changing people's perception and image of downtown Ogden. For a place that I swore I'd never come back to, to be so involved in what was going on, really was amazing. Because she was my mom, I'm sure I got a lot more flexibility than a lot of others to really kind of focus on some of those things that I became really passionate about, and she spent a ton of time. 25th street owes her a huge debt of gratitude. She really changed the face of what that street looks like. 12 We wound up opening the three retail stores in three years because we figured, "No one will come shopping at one store. You have to have more options." Then right after we opened the third one, I had my twins. We were on a plan to open five in five years and I had to take a little step back to take care of two babies that were a total surprise. There were challenges I will say. Working with family I think presents its own set of challenges. Sometimes you can get too close to things and be too honest than with a professional relationship, you might not. But, it gave me so many cool opportunities and I just am so grateful I decided to try that and come back. We all continued, every one of the five of us, then other people would come on. I remember a business owner about a year after we started the association, who owned a mortgage company on the street. I think it was ten percent of every mortgage he wrote he would give to the association so we could start to have some funds to do some things. We produced the first Harvest Moon Celebration that year. Just all of these really amazing opportunities that got me so involved in my community and really understanding what it means to give where you live. The rewards from that are so significant and I'm so excited now that I get to raise my kids in a community that we're all really proud of as opposed to the one that I grew up in, where everybody wasn't quite so proud of being from Ogden. SST: You mentioned that there's a lot of rewards that came out of this experience, and you kind of mentioned like the feeling of pride in the community... I was wondering if there was anything else or if you wanted to elaborate on that. 13 ST: I think it's that in a nutshell, but it's just the way that it expands out. There's pride in community, that there's vibrancy in our downtown, that there's now job opportunities that people have. A great chance to stay here if they want to, or move here and now in my job here at Visit Ogden, we get to host a lot of journalists and media and different visitors, trying to increase the exposure and awareness of our destination. Always, still to this day, I get such a high off of walking them up 25th street or being up at Snowbasin, any place in our community, and seeing their eyes just bulge out of their heads when they look at those mountains and they just love our community so much. We get to promote all of the really wonderful things about it and don't have to worry about the things that need fixing, because every community has things that need fixing. But to watch that transformation of local mentality of being really down on where we live to really being pretty optimistic and positive about where we live. To have played just even the smallest of part in that is a super, super cool thing. Now, I feel like it's been a lifetime ago that we were doing all of that and to watch these next couple of generations coming up and taking on their own, with their own passions and drive and making really cool stuff happen. I think that that will just continue now, and that's exciting. AD: Could you tell us a little bit about Visit Ogden? ST: Visit Ogden is the tourism bureau for Weber County. We are “formally” known as the Ogden Weber Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is a mouthful, we're responsible for all of the tourism efforts for the county. That means everything from encouraging someone to come ski here in the winter, to come to one of our 14 events in the summer. We have a sales team that focuses on selling group business to fill the conference center and room blocks at the hotels and all of that, so association meetings and retreats and conferences and that kind of thing. Anything that brings people here who are part of the visitor economy. We brand ourselves as Visit Ogden because there was switch from Convention and Visitor Bureau mentality of really being more group focused to being destination marketing organizations, which is now shifting again to being what we term DMMO's—Destination Marketing and Management Organizations. While we are marketing or selling or trying to encourage people to come here, we also feel like one of the most important roles we can play is being a voice, locally, for destination development, so that the experience we are out selling to you is why you want to come here. We can follow through on when you actually get here and that the pieces are in place to make sure your stay is positive and memorable. The ski bus is one of those efforts that was something we worked really hard on because a lot of our visitors aren't comfortable driving canyon roads in the winter and we don't have lodging on our mountains, so we were in this bind. Pushing for the ski bus, pushing for wayfinding, helping develop certain events, just whatever it takes to make sure that we're creating that vibrant community that we are promising people that they will experience. And “Visit Ogden,” because Ogden is a place you can find on the map. One of the challenges we have with being named Weber County is that everyone else in the world pronounces it Webber. When we made the branding change to our elected 15 officials, they were struggling with that a bit. We're funded through transient room tax, the hotel bed tax that’s collected by the county, so some of our Weber County elected officials at the time were struggling with dropping Weber from the name and I said, "You know you really have ten seconds to grab someone's attention and you can either use it telling them that it's pronounced Weber and not Webber. Or you can use it to tell them all of the great things we have to offer." Ogden’s the place people can find on a map. Counties usually aren't listed on maps, but we do represent all of Weber County. AD: Okay, super cool. How did you get involved with Visit Ogden? ST: It was kind of that snowball I was talking about earlier. As I got more and more involved in the Street and what was happening in downtown Ogden and more involved with Mayor Godfrey and just working on the downtown revitalization in general, this position at the bureau opened up. A good friend of mine was actually working for the county at the time, and he was serving as the interim director here when the position opened, and he came to me and said, "I really think you should consider this job." I really didn't know what they did so I spent some time learning about it. When I interviewed, made the first round, then there were three of us interviewing in the second round. The other two individuals had CVB, destination marketing experience. They were from other places and were applying for the job and I was the only one who didn't. I had a marketing background of course and all of that, but really, what got me the job was my passion for the community and the fact that I already had so many great relationships with business owners 16 downtown, with elected officials, and various other stakeholders that, fortunately for me, the board had the foresight to say, "Okay, she can learn the destination marketing side, but some of that passion is something that can either never be gotten, or takes a while to just live through and gain." They felt that that was better suited to take the organization to the next level, so they gave me a chance and eleven and a half years later, I'm still here. It's a very untraditional path in the destination marketing world. Most people start in the industry and work their way up. When I tell people I came immediately into the CEO role here, they are very surprised by that. I was only thirty-one when I became the CEO so I was young. But, I have an amazing team who has changed over the years a little bit, but that group that was here in that interim time really held the organization together and taught me everything I needed to know about this industry— which I’m still learning every day, of course. This industry is full of absolutely amazing people. It's fun and I have a staff who is just as passionate as I am or more about this community. It's really cool to be in an organization—I'm sure a lot of nonprofits feel this way—where you're not necessarily worried about what happens in your box, within your walls, or your bottom line; it's all about the impact you're making to a different audience. For us, the community in general. Yeah, we get to do amazing things every day. SST: Did you feel like you faced unique challenges because you were so young? ST: Yes. Definitely. SST: Do you want to go into more of that? 17 ST: Probably those that you can imagine. To be very honest, I was very naive about how being a woman also influenced those challenges, until I got older and couldn't play the young card anymore then realized that a lot of the challenges hadn't changed. But I think it was a little bit of a double whammy, if you will. One of the most important things we can do in our position is we don't have the ability, the budget, or the ownership to make a change happen, but we have the ability to affect a change. Being a voice at the table is the most important thing I do in my job so everyone has the impact of tourism in mind, the impact on the community quality of life when they are making decisions, because everybody comes at it from a different view point. It's not that anyone is trying to do something different; we just all come at it with our own frame of reference. But the great thing about tourism is that usually when you’re improving a community from a tourism perspective, you’re also creating greater quality of life assets and vice versa; greater quality of life means people want to come visit because there are great things going on. So we have the awesome ability to do that. But to generate the respect {for the industry} and to be able to have a voice at the table, being in my early thirties and being a woman—I think that women who are sometimes strong and forceful get looked at differently than a man who is strong and forceful, so coming about things in a way that inspired confidence and built relationships and trust. It was hard and it took a long time and it’s continuing every day. Working primarily with women in my early career, I was very naive to what being a woman in a professional world means and how challenging it is. While I 18 do think it’s changing and while I think there’s a lot of wonderful people out there who view everybody’s voice equally, there are still a lot of conversations that happen that don’t involve everyone and that’s something we all have to continue to work for. I think it gets better every day, and every year, and hopefully by the time my daughter is in the workforce—she’s the same way I was: naive and doesn’t even realize it makes any difference. Establishing that respect and trust that people knew that I knew what I was talking about. That is one thing I always made sure of; I was always the most or one of the most prepared people around the table entering into any conversation because I never wanted anyone to have the excuse that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Always doing my homework, always being prepared, and not being afraid to use my voice and be a part of the conversation. AD: Is there a specific incident that you felt a little discriminated against because you were a woman? ST: I couldn’t point to one. I’m very sensitive to that because I don’t ever want to use it as an excuse either. But there’s just times when you’re in a room and you can tell. There are so many amazing, strong women in this community who play really important roles in organizations, in community groups, in nonprofits, and government, and everywhere, so I do think that’s changing. But, I am in a lot of rooms where I am the only woman around the table, and that’s changing too. It's not as much anymore as it was even five or ten years ago when I started doing this. But it’s just different. Men and women communicate differently. There’s no doubt about that, so it’s just creating that understanding and respect. I do think 19 there were multiple times where ideas were kind of dismissed because “you didn’t know what you were talking about.” I can’t point to one exactly, just a lot of times I felt some frustration—Like I said I really believed early in my career it was age discrimination, and now as I’ve gotten older I think it was the combination. I’m realizing that it doesn’t go away. It gets better but it’s not gone. AD: Let’s see, was it the ‘60s or ‘70s when the women’s movement...? SST: I think it was the ‘60s. ST: ‘60s, yeah. AD: Okay, what are some of your ideas about that? About how it influenced…? ST: Unfortunately, I have been very naive and ignorant about what a lot of women in that time had to go through. It’s a little bit of a catch-22. We complain about where we are now sometimes, but you just think about the strides and the fight that people had to fight. I mean, how lucky are we that they were willing to do it. I think that’s the same for so many things, little problems, big problems, paradigm shifts. You run the gamut. It really takes a person or a group of people who believe so much and are so passionate that they’re really willing to risk everything to make change, and that still happens to this day and I’m very grateful. I recently watched a number of documentaries after seeing recent films about women who made big differences in various industries and started reading more into the actual history instead of the fictionalized version. It is mind blowing what people went through and so many things that people have fought so hard for—whether it was your gender or your race or your religion. And I probably 20 don’t know everything I should but just feel super grateful that I get to sit here and do what I love to do because they were willing to fight that fight. SST: What were some of the women, or the activists, that you said you were researching? Who were some of them? Who were the most inspirational to you? ST: Oh they’re all so inspirational, it’s so hard right? Again, like I said, most of them started from watching a movie with my kids and seeing the fictionalized version and then having to learn more, so Hidden Figures being kind of the start of that then On the Basis of Sex and Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s story. I really didn’t know her story, so when you start reading about these women who made these impacts and you talk about balance, they just had to fight so hard. There’s just so many, I think being involved in women’s studies would be fascinating for me because I know for every story that gets told there’s thousands more that don’t and it would be really inspiring to know more about all of that history and those stories. AD: Can you think of an incident where you felt empowered as a woman? ST: That’s a good question. I feel like I’ve had a lot of them, but I don’t know if I can recall one specifically for you. I would say most of them would be centered around a success at work, or at home too. But at work, I think it’s those personal feelings of accomplishment. I never would have identified it as like one of those moments of being a woman but it’s more just working so hard toward some goal and when you see it come to fruition, it makes all that hard work worth it. And I’ve luckily had quite a few of those over the course of my career, seeing my kids 21 accomplish their goals is the best moment ever, but the one that really fills my heart? Lots of them. I look back on my career and I have lots of feelings of accomplishment and success and it is due to everyone that works around me and amazing people that I get to work with in this community and in this industry. I don’t think anybody does anything alone. A recent one is wayfinding directional signage that’s in downtown Ogden. It’s a silly thing really in the scheme of things but it was very important as one of those destination development initiatives that I talked about. Visitors know where they’re going and it provides a sense of security that you’re in the right place; it also is an awareness mechanism because, for example, if you were going to 25th street but you might not know that the Junction or the River is just a couple blocks away and if a sign can tell you that then we expand people’s worlds. It’s something I had been talking about needing for eight or ten years and fighting for, and finally we just hit the right chord at the right time. It was just this huge collaborative effort due to amazing work done by the city, one of the people on my team designed the signs. That first day I saw the first sign in the ground it was like, “Hallelujah!” It finally paid off and those are small things, but I’m very proud of the work we do here as an office and that gives me a great feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. SST: We might’ve already touched upon this one but it might be an elaboration. Based on your life experience, what would be some of the advice you would give to women of today and to future generations? I know you’ve talked about debunking 22 a few myths in the past, and you’ve also talked about like your more naive self versus what you know now, so what sort of advice would you give? ST: The number one advice I would give is to believe in yourself and to make sure your voice is heard in a way that encourages others to listen. I think that communication is becoming harder and harder as we become more and more detached or use more and more technological means to do so. Poor communication is the cause for many disagreements, misunderstandings, and I think that it is a real skill that has to be developed by a person and that they should take the time to learn how to communicate effectively with people and then to not be afraid to communicate. Sharing your passion, sharing your thoughts are really important, and far too many people sit quietly in a corner and let the conversation happen without them. Everybody has something important to add. SST: I like that. That’s good. ST: Thanks. SST: Do you have any other stories or things that you’d maybe like to voice, maybe something that’s been triggered another question? ST: I just feel like I could talk about different stories and things that impacted me all day; I don’t know what’s relevant. One story—and I’ll preface this by saying my passion has become this community, but that’s not everybody’s passion. It can be a certain element to their life or their work that is within that box that I talked about earlier but—another female business owner here in our community, we were driving back from an Ogden Nature Center concert and she had her little 23 boy in the back of the car. He was maybe three or four years old, and she started talking to him about how lucky we are to live in a community that we have the opportunity to sit outside in such a beautiful venue. I mean, she literally went through every element. Sometimes, it’s important for all of us, me especially, to sit back and take in all the pieces, and she did that that night and it’s something that’s resonated with me. Again, he was a toddler. I’m sure he didn’t comprehend everything she was saying to him, but she literally went through the pieces of how lucky we are that somebody recognized that we should preserve all this acreage of land right in this urban center, how lucky were we that we had access to that space, and we got to sit out and listen to this wonderful music that someone brought in, and to live in this community. She just went on and on and on and I thought, “That’s what I want to be.” I want to be someone who appreciates everything down the line and not just what’s in front of me at the moment. She’s continued to be an amazing mentor to me in all of that: recognizing, wearing our heart on our sleeve, the community impact that she makes. I think also just recognizing that we always have the opportunity to learn from others, because like I said everybody looks at the world in a different way or has different things that are important to them, and to just take that in, and to appreciate that, and learn from it what you can, and take the pieces that will make you just more robust and round out your world. I think that’s really important. 24 SST: Alright, so you mentioned you kind of viewed her as a mentor and you also said that you liked to learn from people, so is there any other story related to her or other people…? ST: Oh I could tell stories about her. AD: What was her name? ST: Kym Buttschardt, she owns Rooster’s Brewing Company. SST: Thank you. ST: I feel super fortunate. I feel like I have had so many mentors along the way, so while my mom was definitely one of my inspirations and gave me the opportunities to be where I am now, the people that I’ve met along the way have been mentors as well. From my first job right out of college working in that company down in Salt Lake, I was the marketing assistant for the marketing department and there were just three other men employed there. One of the project managers knew that I had a real hunger to take on more than the administrative tasks that were part of my job description, so he really took me under his wing gave me ownership over projects. Hopefully I was making his life easier too because I was taking things off his plate, but it takes time to mentor people correctly and he took so much time in helping me learn more and giving me the opportunity to prove myself so I did eventually grow at that company before coming here. That gave me the confidence to know that I could learn and tackle new tasks and scary things, because change is always tricky. Then here in this community, Kym has been a mentor since the day I met her and Heidi Harwood when we started the association. When I started this job, 25 I had no idea what we did as destination marketers People in this industry who were in my role in different communities again took me under their wing and took the time to answer my ten million questions even though it took time out of their day. We really are all competing destinations in some respect because we all want that visitor to come to our community, but never a hint of that. Always just being willing to share knowledge and information and I feel like that continues. Every day I meet amazing people, so there are those within that parallel of where you are or somehow really related to what you’re looking at. With the example of the Nature Center, even though Kym has been a huge mentor in community giving and business and a number of other things, that {Nature Center comment} was totally unrelated, but just figuring out what you can learn from everyone, because there’s so much to learn and everybody has a different way of looking at things. I was hiking one day with a group of friends—this was probably twelve, fifteen years ago—and we were walking on the shoreline trail, which it wasn’t anything like it is now, and one of my friends he said, “We live here.” I mean, he opened up his arms and he was like, “We live here!” And that’s another one that just sticks with me. You just have to sometimes stop and appreciate: I have an amazing job, I live in an amazing community. I have healthy kids, and a great family, and just being appreciative and not overwhelmed by all there is yet to do. AD: That’s great. SST: Yeah, I think we’re gonna wrap up with our last question unless there’s anything you want to add…? 26 ST: That’s always the hardest question of all. AD: Is there anything we’ve brushed over? SST: That you wanted to go more into? ST: No, I don’t think so. I think we’ve covered it pretty well. SST: Alright, here’s our final question, related to the project. How do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? ST: Big question. It changed everything. It was the first time that it was really officially recognized on a bigger, broader scale that a woman’s voice does matter, and that she can be knowledgeable enough to make a smart, intellectual choice, and that it matters what she has to contribute or say about something. I think that the way that has transcended through the years and knowing that it just really wasn’t that long ago, which is amazing. But where we’ve come since then and where hopefully we’ll go in that same amount of time into the future—Like I said earlier, I’m just so grateful that someone, some people, were so willing to fight so hard to make it happen and to then continually try to put women on an equal playing field because what we have to say and what we have to contribute is very important and it does matter. AD: Thank you so much. SST: Thank you so much for everything. ST: Oh well I’m honored that you asked for me to be included. Thank you. SST: Thank you for saying yes. 27 AD: Right, sometimes it can be a little unnerving to be, not necessarily grilled, but interviewed. ST: Yes, it is. SST: Real quick, just for our records, could you state the names of some of the people involved. I know you have stated some, but has your mother ended up on this record? I don’t remember. ST: I don’t think I ever said her name, so my mom is Jo Packham. SST: And your kids’ and husband’s names? ST: Okay, my kids are Olivia and Jackson Toliver and my husband is Brett Toliver. Kym Buttschardt, I think I mentioned her name, Heidi Harwood. I don’t think there was anyone else… AD: What was the name of the man in Salt Lake. . . your first boss? ST: Oh his name is Steve Hertzenburg. I haven’t said his name for a long time but I owe him a lot. Guy Letendre was the friend who said, “We live here!” He now works at Weber State actually. Yes, I think that’s it. I can’t think of anybody else I mentioned. SST: I think that’s it. ST: Great, perfect. Okay, perfect. Thank you guys.