Keeping your balance in juggling work, family and community is a modern woman's constant challenge.
No one knows that better than Rachel J. Coleman and Jessica Grimsley, co-founders of
High Hopes in High Heels, a personal and professional networking group in Tampa that manages to give equal weight to networking, philanthropy and fun.
The group's mission is to help provide support to members in order to make a difference in their communities through charitable work while providing opportunities to share, inspire and grow personally as well as professionally.
A
calendar on the group's website shows monthly events featuring organized volunteer work and self-nourishment classes. Upcoming events include helping out at a Special Olympics swim meet, planning a fun party at the
Children's Home, participating in the fall festival at
Kids Charity of Tampa Bay and volunteering at
Kids And Canines annual Paws For A Cause. Self-nourishment classes offer lessons in beauty tips, cooking, inspirational books and breast cancer awareness.
Speaker and author Sherry Sexton, recently spoke to a small gathering of HHIHH members at
The Grape to discuss Me Time & De-stressing. Sexton discussed breathing exercises, going to a movie solo, meditation and singing among other things as a way to cope with stress.
Take a peek at the High Hopes in High Heels Me Time & De-stressing gathering in this photo slideshow by 83 Degrees Managing Photographer Julie Busch Branaman. Comments? Contact
83 Degrees.
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Read more articles by Diane Egner.
Diane Egner is a community leader and award-winning journalist with more than four decades of experience reporting and writing about the Tampa Bay Area of Florida. She serves on the boards of the University of South Florida Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications Advisory Council, The Institute for Research in Art (Graphicstudio, the Contemporary Art Museum, and USF’s Public Art Program) Community Advisory Council, Sing Out and Read, and StageWorks Theatre Advisory Council. She also is a member of Leadership Florida and the Athena Society. A graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BA in journalism, she won the top statewide award for editorial writing from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors while at The Tampa Tribune and received special recognition by the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists for creative work as Content Director at WUSF Public Media. Past accomplishments and community service include leadership positions with Tampa Tiger Bay Club, USF Women in Leadership & Philanthropy (WLP), Alpha House of Tampa Bay, Awesome Tampa Bay, Florida Kinship Center, AIA Tampa Bay, Powerstories, Arts Council of Hillsborough County, and the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce. Diane and her husband, Sandy Rief, live in Tampa.