What do you call three women who got fed up with their respective professions’ constraints and reinvented how they work and how they see gender, power and social responsibility defining individuals and society?
How about Riveting Broads, for starters.
Miranda Aisling, Molly Merluzzi and Jacqui Richard are the self-described “mutual admirers” behind the Riveting Broads Summit — the Friday, March 13 forum at the Lynn Museum, 590 Washington St., scheduled to start at 9 a.m. and run through a 5 p.m. cocktail reception with live music.
Forty-five potential presenters submitted proposals to take part in the forum and the organizers picked 12 who will discuss topics including, “Centering the Whole: The intersection of womanhood and racial identity” and “Women and Diversity in Politics.”
Women and men are invited to Riveting Broads but Merluzzi, Aisling and Richard hope their audience leaves the event with more questions than answers.
“We’re not experts. We are asking questions people might be afraid to ask,” Merluzzi said, adding, “There’s clearly an appetite for this type of discussion.”
Burned out by a 90-hour-a-week corporate job, Merluzzi founded MM Consulting in 2016 to help nonprofits and startups. Within two years she was successful but not satisfied; so she wrote a business plan for Riveting Broads.
The media production company is committed, Merluzzi said, to “talking about the things everyone tells you not to talk about at a cocktail party.”
After forming Riveting Broads, it didn’t take Merluzzi long to make connections with kindred spirits. Cambridge resident and Peabody native Richard, founder of the social responsibility-oriented Next Gen Network, quickly crossed paths with Merluzzi.
They shared a mutual desire to sharply challenge definitions of entrepreneurship from the perspective of gender and power. Next Gen hosts four events a month focused heavily on entrepreneurship workshops oriented around building a community of people interested in supporting one another toward reaching goals.
True to her Peabody roots, Richard organizes regular volunteer events to help out Haven for Hunger in Peabody.
Her efforts and Merluzzi’s dovetailed seamlessly with Aislings’ objectives for upending the art world. A painter who studied at the college level when she was 16, she formed Beverly-based Miranda’s Hearth in 2013 after reaching a definitive conclusion about her art.
“I wanted to have a career not financially based on my art work,” she said.
Like Richard and Merluzzi, Aisling vowed to poke holes in established definitions about her chosen vocation. Art, she decided, should belong to everyone and be redefined as creativity.
Aisling said the organization has aided 25,000 creators in the last six years. Her push to convert an unused Beverly school into an art school shoved Aisling head-long into what she described as the “male hierarchy” of municipal government and construction.
Under the umbrella of Riveting Broads’ podcasts, the three have talked about environmentally-friendly “tiny houses” and domestic abuse.
Merluzzi coined the views she shares with Richard and Aisling as “intentionally disruptive” with the shared goal of “creating vulnerability (to) … heal our society.”
“It’s how we see power and how we see strength,” Richard said, adding she views the March 13 summit, which Miranda’s Hearth is co-sponsoring, as an opportunity for connection and support.
Aisling described how Miranda’s Hearth’s goals intersect with Riveting Broads.’
“We help people who haven’t had voices in the past to view themselves as active agents in their lives. We are trying to find support,” she said.
