Dr. Elaine Richardson is honored as a 2024 YWCA Women of Achievement for her community work and engagement. Credit: Elaine Manusakis | Every Angle Photography
Elaine Richardson, a professor of literacy studies at Ohio State, is one of six honorees who will receive the Women of Achievement award on April 11 from YWCA Columbus.
Richardson is being honored for her extensive community work and the founding of community organizations like the Education Foundation for Freedom. Elizabeth Brown, CEO of YWCA Columbus, said Richardson “embodies the Women of Achievement award more than almost any other nominee across her career.”
Recipients are selected based on the lasting impact individual women have on those around them and community engagement, with some emphasis on career accomplishments and expertise, Brown said. According to the YWCA website, YWCA Columbus has given the award to 293 community leaders in the past 37 years, including NBC4 news anchor Colleen Marshall and former Franklin County Commissioner Marliyn Brown in 2022.
Richardson has years of research and multiple books — published on topics such as the education and literacy of Afro-diasporic people and sociolinguistics — that have contributed to her recognition from YWCA Columbus, according to the College of Arts and Sciences website.
“My work is research-informed and accountable to the community,” Richardson said in an email. “Being a full professor at Ohio State has given me access to resources to apply to critical structural issues that affect the lives of Black women, girls, gender-expansive people and other minority populations with the goal of interrupting the reproduction of oppression.”
Not restricting her research and knowledge to the confines of classroom walls, Richardson said she’s actively worked in the community and led education in the Columbus area for over 14 years.
In 2016, Richardson founded the nonprofit organization Education Foundation for Freedom, which provides educational and artistic experiences to empower women- and girl-identified people from underserved areas of Columbus, such as the annual Columbus Women and Girls’ Fest, according to the Education Foundation for Freedom website.
Richardson also founded the Hiphop Literacies Conference in 2011, a community that brings together a diverse array of scholars, artists, students and parents to create a dialogue around the genre’s impact, issues and cultural narratives, according to the Hiphop Literacies Conference website.
“I have found that learning from and with the community is paramount for understanding how people are navigating structures and what that looks like in everyday life,” Richardson said.
This dedication and interaction within the community is what Brown considers to be a defining characteristic of Richardson that earned her the award.
Cynthia Tyson, a close friend of Richardson and fellow professor in Ohio State’s Department of Teaching and Learning, said she sees the responsibility Richardson holds to educate and help the less fortunate or struggling in her community.
“I’ve seen her at educational conferences where she speaks to thousands of people, but I’ve also seen her sit down on a street corner with somebody and ask them what they need or if there’s something she could do,” Tyson said. “That’s not Dr. Richardson, that’s just one human to another.”
Tyson said the two share a friendship that professionally may have them discussing societal topics like race and women empowerment, but also a personal relationship that has them traveling the globe together and giving each other nicknames.
Tyson said she’s excited that her friend and colleague is being honored by YWCA Columbus and Richardson’s personal qualities of humanity and love are what make her deserving of this award.
“She is unconditional in her love and is always a fighter for the underdog,” Tyson said. “She genuinely loves and cares about people — especially young women and girls.”
According to the YWCA website, other honorees include Ohio State alum Corinne Burger, chief control manager at JPMorgan Chase & Co., and member of the Dean’s Advisory Council at the Fisher College of Business; Ohio State alum Demetries Neely, executive director and CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Performing & Cultural Arts Complex; Renée Shumate, manager of external affairs at AEP Ohio; Ola Snow, chief human resources officer at Cardinal Health; and Erin Upchurch, executive director of Kaleidoscope Youth Center, integrative social work practitioner and community lecturer in the Ohio State College of Social Work.
Richardson will receive the award at the April 11 ceremony at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, according to the YWCA website.
