The work rarely makes headlines.

It happens in boardrooms, in training sessions, in conversations about budgets, compliance and staffing. It happens behind the scenes, before a nonprofit launches a program, before a grant is written, before services reach the people who need them.

Anne Hindery has built her career in that space.

There is a mix of anticipation and uncertainty, the kind that comes with starting over or starting fresh.

Carmen Tapio has built her work around that moment.

As the founder and owner of North End Teleservices (NET), Tapio leads one of Omaha’s largest minority-owned businesses, a company that provides contact center and business process outsourcing services to national clients.

On election night in 1986, the outcome in Nebraska signaled more than a shift in political leadership. It marked a national first in American politics. 

Kay A. Orr had been elected governor of Nebraska, becoming the first Republican woman ever elected governor in the United States.

When Brigitte McQueen arrived in Omaha in 2006, North Omaha was not widely recognized as a contemporary arts destination. Within five years, she would help change that.

Before she became one of Hollywood’s most respected actresses, Hilary Swank’s story began far from red carpets and film premieres. Born July 30, 1974, in Lincoln, Nebraska, Swank spent much of her childhood growing up in Bellingham, Washington, where her family lived in a trailer park.

Long before her name became tied to one of Omaha’s most well-known institutions, Mary Lucretia Creighton was simply known as someone who helped her neighbors. 

Born Mary Lucretia Wareham on February 3, 1834, in Dayton, Ohio, she married businessman and pioneer Edward Creighton in 1856.

For Maggi Thorne, resilience isn’t just a message she shares with audiences. It’s the thread that runs through nearly every chapter of her life. 

Growing up in San Diego, Thorne had a childhood shaped by financial hardship and instability at home.

Today, many of the protections and social programs that support children and families across the United States feel like a normal part of public life. But a century ago, many of those systems did not yet exist. 

One of the people who helped change that was Grace Abbott. 

Today, thousands of visitors walk through the doors of the Joslyn Art Museum, one of Omaha’s most important cultural institutions. But behind the museum’s creation was a woman whose generosity and vision helped shape the city and the community around her. 

Sarah Joslyn believed that art and culture should belong to everyone.

 Anna Wilson built her fortune in Omaha’s Sporting District, then quietly redirected it toward the city’s most vulnerable. By the 1870s, Wilson was living on Douglas Street, first listed in the federal census as “keeping house,” though she was working in gambling houses connected to her partner, Dan Allen, a well-known gambler and saloon keeper.

The door opened to the sound of music already playing.

Inside, the records were stacked wall to wall — soul, jazz, blues, gospel — each one part of a larger story. Customers didn’t just come to buy music. They came to listen, to talk, to stay awhile.

Leola McDonald was behind the counter.

On May 20, 2015, Kerrie Orozco went to work knowing her life was about to change. Her daughter, born three months early, was finally coming home from the hospital. Orozco had delayed her maternity leave until that moment, planning to begin it the next day. 

In 1889, inside Omaha’s Grand Opera House, Comfort Baker stood before a crowd of graduates and delivered an original essay titled “One More Plea for the Negro.” The applause, according to reports, came in waves.

When Megan Hunt was elected to the Nebraska Legislature in 2018, she did more than win a seat. She made history.

Born May 9, 1986, Hunt became the first openly LGBTQ person elected to the Nebraska Legislature and the first woman to represent District 8, which includes Omaha neighborhoods such as Dundee, Benson and Keystone.

When Magdalena Garcia was 9 years old, she moved from Mexico City to Omaha, carrying with her a deep love of art shaped by her grandmother and aunt. Every summer, she returned to Mexico City, where museums, ballet and opera were part of everyday life.

Before downtown Omaha became a destination for contemporary art, Ree Kaneko saw possibility in the vacant warehouses of the Old Market district.

Born and raised in Omaha’s Little Italy neighborhood, an immigrant community near the Old Market, Kaneko grew up close to the area that would later shape her work.

In 1976, Edwina Justus climbed into the cab of a Union Pacific locomotive and became one of the first Black women in the United States to work as a locomotive engineer.

Justus was born July 11, 1943, in Omaha to Lee and Caldonia Isaiah Chaney. As a child, she became the first Black student to enroll at Brown Park Elementary School in Omaha.

In Omaha, she was simply known as Mrs. B. But Rose Blumkin’s story is anything but simple.

Born Rose Gorelick in 1893 in what was then the Russian Empire, she was one of eight children. Her father (Solomon Gorelick) was a rabbi, and her mother (Chasia Gorelick) ran a grocery store. At 13, Rose went to work in a dry-goods store to help the family. At 16, she was the manager with 6 employees working for her.

When Dr. Cheryl Logan walked past the portraits of past superintendents at Omaha Public Schools, she felt the weight of history. Since the district’s founding in 1859, none of the faces on that wall looked like hers. That changed when she became the first Black superintendent and the first woman to lead OPS.

For Camellia “Cammy” Watkins, the work of equity is not abstract. It is personal. It is local. And it is urgent.

An Omaha native and graduate of Omaha South High School, Watkins has long felt called to service. She has spent nearly 20 years in the nonprofit sector, with work spanning affordable housing, performing arts administration, and community-focused programming.