Women Rising: Overcoming Patriarchy in America discussion with Monica Ohlinger

by Rachel Ryan, Enlight Media 

Tune in as Monica Ohlinger, founder of Ohlinger Studios, and Rachel Ryan, executive producer of Women Rising, sit down to discuss In Context’s upcoming series, Women Rising: Overcoming Patriarchy in America, launching May 2025. 

In this conversation, Monica and Rachel reflect on the founding of Ohlinger Studios, their transition into product development with In Context, and the creative journey behind developing Women Rising.  

Women Rising is a video-based online program that examines the history of women’s fight for equality in America.

RR & MO Women Rising Interview Transcript 

RR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this interview with Monica Ohlinger. My name is Rachel Ryan. I am an executive producer of Women Rising, which is the series that we're discussing today. I am joined by Monica Ohlinger, who is also an executive producer of the series, as well as the founder of Ohlinger Studios and the co-founder of Enlight Media. So, how are you doing today, Monica?  

MO: I'm doing great. How are you?  

RR: I'm doing great. Thank you so much for joining me this afternoon. We are here, as I previously said, to talk about the Women Rising series. Before we do, I think it would be useful if we talked about Ohlinger Studios a little bit. So, tell us about Ohlinger Studios. How did you start your own business? And how has running a woman owned business changed in the years you've been operating?  

MO: Well, I started the company at a time of downsizing in publishing. It was in the 90s and they were starting to cut back on in-house people. I was a development editor, and that was one of the departments that was getting cut back. I was also really frustrated because there were no opportunities for advancement. That was a job where they put intelligent, capable women, and you were kind of stuck in that job and couldn't get out of it. So, I thought by starting my own business I would kind of realize my own ambition. I could create the career path I wanted myself. I should also say that I was able to do this because I had a small inheritance from my mother.  

I talked about my mother in the introduction a little bit and what an inspiration she was for me, so, that was very apt that I was able to start the business with that inheritance. Really, the biggest challenge for me then and even now is access to capital. It was very hard to get any kind of financing at the time. Even now, it's hard to get financing. It finally took me making friends with a woman bank manager who advocated for me for me to be able to get a line of credit at the bank, basically.  

And even now all of that is personally guaranteed by me. So, I've had to bootstrap, from the beginning, and even now, I still have to bootstrap it, basically.  

RR: And when talking about Ohlinger Studios, it's important to note that Ohlinger Studios is an SBA certified Woman-Owned Small Business as well as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise in Ohio.  

MO: Right.  

RR: And jumping to our next question. We've covered Ohlinger Studios, let's talk about In Context a little bit. Ohlinger specializes in content development, but you've recently moved into the product development sphere by launching In Context. Can you tell us a little bit about what inspired this leap into the product development realm?  

MO: So, it really started with my partner Patrice Jones. Uh, we're partners in Enlight Media and also, In Context. Patrice really was moved after George Floyd to create this presentation that he was giving to companies about structural racism. And we realized there was an opportunity there to create an educational product for companies to educate their workforce about structural racism. So, out of that Patterns in American Racism was born.  

We kind of ran with Patrice's idea and, and created this video module series and also, the concept of, you know, discussion questions and activities and extra resources along with the video. So, it was really a perfect marrying of Ohlinger Studios and their content expertise and Patrice and Enlight Media's expertise in video. From there, we, you know, our goal was to contextualize for people the need for diversity, equity and inclusion.  

And we were inspired by an academic paper that showed if you gave people the historical knowledge about structural racism, they were much more open to ideas about how to fix it and what policies might be enacted to fix it. And so, really, we're hoping that our products create more informed, better allies.  

RR: And it's also important to note that Enlight Media was co-founded by you and Patrice in 2019. And this product, In Context, is a great opportunity for following your studios on the content development side to partner with the video production arm Enlight to work together as these two companies to create this product. So, as someone that works at Enlight, it's been very rewarding to get to work with the Ohlinger side closer because we'll work on one off projects together, but having such a meaningful product that everybody cares about and put so much effort into has been very rewarding.  

MO: It's really a perfect combination of our expertise. It's really great. It's been very rewarding for me as well. Yeah.  

RR: All right. And now that we've gotten to talk a little bit about Ohlinger Studios, Enlight Media, and In Context, I think it would be great to talk about our next series that's coming out this month called Women Rising: Overcoming Patriarchy in America. So, Monica, why was Women Rising created?  

MO: We felt like sexism was the logical topic to tackle after structural racism, which was the topic of our first series, Patterns in American Racism. Ohlinger Studios is a woman-owned, woman-led and mostly women-powered company. So, we all have a story to tell here. So, it's really important to everyone on our team to tell this story.  

RR: I think it's been very empowering for everyone, but especially the women that work at Enlight and Ohlinger to get to collaborate on this project.  

MO: Yeah, I agree.  

RR: And circling back to something we talked a little bit about earlier. As a woman owned business owner, why is this history important to tell? And what makes it personal to you?  

MO: In the introduction to this series, I talk a little bit about my grandmother and my mother, who both had very profound impacts on my worldview. My grandmother, you know, was born at a time where there were a lot of barriers for her. So, she was the valedictorian of her class but wasn't able to give the valedictory speech. She wanted to go to college, but her parents wouldn't let her go to college. She still managed to find a way to have a great career and to be very successful, but she really had to overcome a lot.  

MO: So, I always really have looked up to her. My mother had more opportunities because of my grandmother, but even still at the time that she was, you know, coming into the work world, she had a lot of barriers, too. She had a lot of things she had to overcome. And she's always been very inspirational to me. She was somebody who was really entrepreneurial in how she approached her job. So, even though she always worked for other people, she found a way to be really creative and entrepreneurial in that job.  

MO: And again, she was just such a great role model for me. So, I think that they both showed persistence and resilience, which is what I think is the history of women in America, persistence and resilience.  

RR: So, something unique about the Women Rising series is that we spotlight everyday women taking on extraordinary challenges. So, with that in mind, how did you decide what stories and historical moments to include in the videos?  

MO: We wanted to highlight the history of the different waves of feminism. So, we had to highlight the important people in those movements. So, women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary McLeod Bethune, Betty Friedan. But we also, saw an opportunity to show how everyday women also impacted the movements by just what they did every day. So, we created a feature in the modules called Defying Limits to highlight some of those people like Mabel Lee Kamata, would Tarana Burke.  

It was a way for us to really tell a more complete story instead of just highlighting the people you maybe have heard of. Also, talking about people you haven't heard of who did really have an impact, but also, put yourself in that role of I am somebody who can make a change. I am somebody who can have an impact like those everyday women did.  

RR: And I think that's something that has stuck out to me while working to develop these videos as well. I mean, I generally I took women's, gender and sexuality studies in college. I generally knew about the waves of feminism and women's suffrage and things like that, but working on these videos has been so rewarding because before these videos, I didn't know about Eleanor Pruitt Stuart encouraging women to travel west during westward migration alone or with a partner. 

I didn't know about, in module four, we talk about women joining the workforce during World War two, and we spotlight some women who worked for Boeing aircraft at the time. Things I never knew about before. And I think something important to note with the effort to cover these individual, everyday American women's stories is that it was a great opportunity to cover stories of women of color and queer women, stories that wouldn't often get to be spotlighted. So, I think that's incredibly valuable, an incredibly valuable piece of the series that we made an effort to include.  

So, our next question is, what do you hope people take away from Women Rising?  

MO: So, I hope people in learning the history understand that women have been fighting for these rights since the founding of our country, and these rights have not been freely given to us. We have had to fight for all of them. It's not a straight line. It hasn't been a straight line. We're actually going through a period of backlash right now. And I think we have to stay vigilant, and we have to know that there's still a fight and we still have to be in it. So, I hope people will learn from this, that we cannot be complacent.  

RR: Absolutely. Now that we've discussed why Women Rising was created, let's talk about the application of the product a little bit. So, how do you see Women Rising sparking meaningful change in the workplace?  

MO: Really, the goal of both of our collections is to educate people about the structures that lead to discrimination so they can be a bulwark against it. So, I think I mentioned this earlier. We want to create good allies. We want to create people who are armed with knowledge so that they can help us in our fight. And I mean, work is important in people's lives, right? We spend majority of our time at work. So, that has to be a safe place. That has to be a place where we know that we'll be listened to, will be heard. I think companies want to create that atmosphere. They want to create an atmosphere that includes everybody.  

RR: And I think that's a common theme. Even between Women Rising and our debut collection, Patterns in American Racism. It's all about context and how context is key. In order to spark meaningful change, we have to know how we got here.  

MO: And I think people will find in every module there'll be something like, I didn't know that, you know, you'll learn something that'll be like a light bulb will go off like, oh, I didn't know that. That makes sense now, you know. So, it really, they're really great. They're great learning opportunities for people.  

RR: Absolutely. So, I have one question left for you today, but before I ask it, I just want to give a quick thank you. Thank you so, much for joining me this afternoon and talking about this new series, Woman Rising, coming out this month. I'm excited that we're just about to launch this and share it with the world. I think it is immensely valuable.  

MO: Thank you. Rachel.  

RR: All right. Our last my last question is, why should companies and leaders invest in this collection now?  

MO: We are in a time of backlash right now where some of our rights and civil liberties are under attack. I said earlier, we can't be complacent. And I hope business leaders know how valuable women's voices are in their businesses. And they should think that like 40 to 50% of their employees and customers are women, and they should care about them and their rights, and they should help us fight for them.  

RR: All right. That was my last question for my interview with Monica. Thank you so, much again for joining me. And for anybody looking for more information about the Women Rising series, you can go to InContextNow.com.