Our region is blessed with many strong women. Whether as a mother, a wife, a working professional, a volunteer or a community leader – or all of these – like our featured Woman in Business, Paula Hickman. As executive director of The Community Foundation of Northwest Louisiana, Paula wears many hats and all of them seem to suit her very nicely. Like many of the ladies on these pages, she has great satisfaction in her job and finds happiness in her life by engaging with and supporting others. Strength does come from within and the power of its projection is unstoppable. Enjoy our features on Paula and the many other successful women of our area on the following pages. Congratulate them on their success and encourage them to continue to be the bright light that they are.

Paula Hickman was recently named the 2016 recipient of the United Way’s Clyde E. Fant Memorial Award, which recognizes an individual who has contributed to the community through leadership, campaign or volunteerism. Hickman is the executive director of The Community Foundation of North Louisiana (the Community Foundation), where she is responsible for leadership, management, strategic planning and development. She also brings together area citizens, nonprofit organizations and governmental entities to discuss and address issues affecting the community.

Hickman could easily have ended up on a different path. She started out as a journalist before heading to law school to become an attorney who specialized in trusts and estate planning. In fact, it was one of her clients who was on the board of the Community Foundation that asked Paula to apply for the job of executive director.

It wasn’t a stretch at all for Hickman, who still remembers a defining moment in her life from when she was a ninth-grader in Birmingham, Alabama. “It was my first philanthropic effort on my own without my family,” Hickman said. “A teacher got probably six or eight girls out of our class and took us to the girls’ reformatory because she wanted us to connect with the girls who were there.”

“It was eye-opening because I learned how much they were like me,” Hickman said. “We started talking as girls do about makeup and hair and boys – and making that connection. I think, looking back with the advantage of many years, that it was pivotal because it was really the first breakout of my little family cocoon and understanding the rest of the world, and really how much alike we all are.”

Hickman was perfectly happy being a journalist after getting her bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama. “I loved journalism,” she said. “I love to write. That is really my heart, so I still try to write every day. But I thought going to law school would just be interesting. I really didn’t go to prove a point. I had seen the movie “The Paper Chase” and I guess I had an inkling that I would just sit around drinking coffee and talking about how I would make things better. I was there about two days when I realized that was not the case.”

“I was right, it was intellectually stimulating and I loved that,” Hickman said. “It was competitive and I was having to learn a whole new vocabulary that’s kind of weird. Initially, you’re just kind of drinking from a fire hose of information and trying to make sense of it. But I loved thinking about the law and really its place in our society and how it can be used to make a better world.”

When Hickman considered the job offer from the Community Foundation, she knew she couldn’t do it without a vision. “I started thinking about philanthropy and it’s really about more than money,” she said. “It is really helping people engage to do what they want to do, which is to have a good place to live. It doesn’t matter if you are black or white, rich or poor, red or green. We concentrate on all of those differences when we really need to get back to the fact that we’re all alike… because we all want a good place to live, we want a place to raise our kids, we want them to have a good education, we want good healthcare. We want to have some fun and we want to be safe, no matter which neighborhood we live in. All of those things are the common human experience.”

"We all want a good place to live, we want a place to raise our kids, we want them to have a good education, we want good healthcare. We want to have some fun and we want to be safe, no matter which neighborhood we live in. All of those things are the common human experience.”

– Paula Hickman

Hickman makes time to volunteer for various nonprofits such as Providence House, Glen Retirement System and Volunteers of America and she was a cofounder of the VOA LightHouse. When asked how she picks the nonprofits that get her time and leadership, she laughed and said, “Probably somebody asked me to help and I said yes. My husband laughs and says ‘no’ is a word I really don’t know. If I can see somebody is sincere and has need and I can do something about it, I feel like it’s my duty to help or to point them in a direction that they can get help. And that’s really what I see my role at the foundation as being, really – connecting people. Some are donors that want to give money and some are volunteers. Some are nonprofits that need to know one another.”

Hickman believes there is presently a paradigm shift occurring around philanthropy. “Back when I was young and starting out on nonprofit boards, we really looked at philanthropy like ‘I need $5,000 to do XYZ. I will get $5,000 so we can do $5,000 worth of value and programming.’ That kind of makes sense unless you look at it like a business, and a nonprofit is a business. You have to get more than a dollar for a dollar. You want a dollar-plus back. These are community investments that we all are making.”

An important concept in philanthropy today is leveraging. “The question is how can we leverage that gift in a way that is uplifting and effective?” Hickman said. “So I think now people are looking more at outcomes. If I’m giving money, what am I really getting back from the nonprofit? How many other donors are leveraging my money? At the Community Foundation we have several giving circles, such as women or young professionals. They’re each giving a little bit and collectively, they are giving a lot.”

Another difference in philanthropy from then to now is, of course, technology. “Campaigns using technology, such as Give for Good democratizes philanthropy in a way,” Hickman said. “It’s not just for the Bill Gates and Rockefellers of the world. Philanthropy is really for everyone.

And everybody can give something. I think we’re hardwired to want to do that. I think my role at the foundation is helping people connect to that desire.”

Even with a busy foundation job, Hickman said that work is only one part of life. “It’s a means; it’s not the end. It’s the wholeness of life, maybe. I think God reconciles us all back together. I love the word ‘shalom.’ It means peace – not in terms of absence of conflict, but it means wholeness.”

Hickman finds that wholeness with her family. “We have two wonderful boys,” she said. “Brooks is an attorney who is married to Ileana from Romania and lives in Paris. Bill is in Birmingham and is in commercial real estate. I’m very proud of both of them.”

Paula’s husband Ken managed to pop in briefly and perfectly summed up her success by simply saying, “She has a heart of gold and she’s very effective at what she does.”

Paula also enjoys painting. “I’m kind of a Grandma Moses,” she said. “I didn’t start until I was fifty. I went to Camille Hirsch. I was still practicing law and she had a wonderful class and fabulous women who painted all day on Wednesdays, so I would kind of sneak away and paint during a long lunch hour. It was hard to sustain – because I had a job. So then I started coming to classes at night with different people. I just love it. It is very therapeutic. There’s really a wonderful little colony of women my age who are doing this.”

Ultimately, however, everything goes back to community and how to make it better. Thankfully, Hickman has amassed a treasure chest of leadership skills through training and practice. So when asked what message she would have for a room full of young future leaders, Hickman replied, “Know who you are … and know whose you are.”

“We are not in this world all by ourselves,” Hickman said. “And you have to know yourself first, to know how you fit into this bigger picture that God has created. But I think we do ourselves a disservice if we ignore the spiritual part of our lives. So finding a spiritual pathway is very important.”

“As far as their work,” Hickman said, “people say, ‘oh, find your passion,’ but I think it’s better to ask ‘what do you want to accomplish?’ That would mean more.”

“Look for the wholeness,” Hickman said. “You’re not going to achieve that on your own because we’re all finite. It’s really connecting with others where we’re complementing each other. We’re greater together than we are operating in our own little silos.”

– Susan Reeks

Feature photos by Stacey Tinsley