•  How did I come up with the Great Women Portrait Project? 
•  The roots of the project were planted when my daughter was little, and I was reading her bedtime stories, I wanted to tell her about the Great Women of Nova Scotia -the province on Canada's Eastern seaboard where we life.  I ended up stuck at home, so I started painting – and ended up creating my first large-scale collection of portraits of great women which was purchased by the Royal Bank for their national art collection. As Julia grew older, and took an interest in math, I wanted to tell her about Great Women of Engineering... about female pioneers in STEM fields and what they had accomplished.... and again...no great stories bubbled up. 
•  That uncomfortable realization - that half our history, the female half - was missing from my consciousness, was the spark that created my Great Women Productions portrait business. 
•  The Great Women Portrait Project grew out of the intense reaction that women had to these 'great women' portraits I was researching and creating; I’ve had a art exhibits, and boardroom meetings, where diverse groups of women leaders were introduced to the project concept.  Men haven’t taken a lot of interest but women have a totally different reaction: they are hungry for their history. Men don’t seem to believe me when I explain that the world is, basically, designed through a male lens of experience and that women and men, boys and girls, don’t know the half of history that captures women’s work. I’ve found that so many STEM industry women I meet and connect with don’t know the history of women in STEM. It’s frustrating but also fascinating.
•  During Covid, I was on a virtual trade mission sponsored by the Canadian and Nova Scotia government, and met a lot of U.S. women who were interested as well in my work. I decided to test the project in home waters first..." While Canadian women are starting to gather behind the project, I must give credit where credit is due: the first women to help me with ithis project, in very hands-on ways, helping me to refine my project approach - were U.S based women in the tech and space industry; women in Houston, Atlanta and Denver.
•  What’s the extent of this project – any deadlines? Completion dates? The project officially launched on International Women's Day 2023 last March 8th. Here is the related press release about the launch. I have a target date of Oct. 11 2023, the International Day of the Girl, to have at least 15 Canadian women and a total of 20-30 female leaders in all, hanging Great Women portraits that they've commissioned for year one of The Project.
•  You’ll be creating 20-30 portraits between now and International Day of the Girl on Oct. 11. 
•  Is that the deadline for completion? That's the first project deadline, yes. For completion and delivery and hanging of the first round of Great Women portraits for this project. (This is conceived as a 5-year project - relaunching March 8th, and wrapping on Oct. 11th of each year.)
•  How do you “discover” women of yesterday – do you research on potential women to do portraits on? Or do the female leader sponsors select/sponsor the portraits to be done? Both. I am creating a Great Women Gallery which already has images and links to background on 90-plus, historic female STEM pioneers, inventors and innovators - almost all, I think, are people whose faces and stories I'd never encountered. So, that's there to make things easy for women to find a female pioneer that speaks to them - someone they'd like to honour in portrait form. But they can pick whomever they like - some have a woman already in mind; others want me to suggest someone. It's pretty organic - the selection process. (side note: I love the NYTimes 'Overlooked No More' section and some time back have been in touch with the woman who started that at the Times - so I'll be digging out her contact info now, and digging more into their archives for gallery candidates - and to suggest as a site to explore, to my portrait patrons. (Interestingly, the times'  link above  loads to a page where the first woman profiled is Alice August Ball, who was the first Great Women I captured in portrait. Alice's story is an amazing and infuriating.)
•  “Women leaders participating in the project will invite 4 other women to form a 5-person Art Patron Collective (APC) and commission one Great Woman portrait honoring a historic female pioneer/innovator.”
•  How many women leaders have agreed and formed APCs so far?  I finalized details of the concept in January, held boardroom meetings with women to test the idea in February, launched the project in March and formally issued this week and last the call to to participate ie asking women who’ve learned about the project, through the boardroom meetings and print and tv media I did in March, to join and form APCs  - (which is when I reached out to you) and this week I will start to reach out to C-Suite women across Canada, and in the U.S, primarily via LinkedIn connections. More than 65% of the women invited thus far have agreed to join the project and half are are in the process of determining who they want in their APC. The first on board with the project was Frances 'Poppy' Northcutt, who shot a first-person, powerful video for me to use in my boardroom meetings with women to talk about the project; the video speaks specifically to the need and power of role models for girls.
•  Why is it important that “When a girl closes her eyes, to imagine a scientist or inventor or pioneer, I want her to see a female face.”  

Simple: role models really matter. 

Poppy Northcutt talks, in the video she shot, about how Rosaly Lopes, - as a young girl growing up in Rio de Janiero - once saw Poppy's picture in a newspaper. Rosaly shared with Poppy how seeing this young woman - the first woman/female engineer in NASA's Mission Control during Apollo missions - changed Rosaly's image of what she could be. 

It's the 'if you see it, you can be it' reality. 

One of the women I met on the virtual trade mission was the head of the Geena Davis Institute; we were very much in sync with our beliefs around the deep need for girls to have role models, to help them see their own potential. 

My focus, because of my daughter, is now primarily on STEM-related fields - finding and revealing the role models that will inspire girls to see traditionally male-dominated domains - like engineering and computer science - as 'women's work', too. 

I believe that if girls - and boys - knew the powerful paths women have paved in STEM fields, girls would have a sense of ownership in these arenas and boys a sense of respect for women's pioneering STEM work. 

We need all our talent at the table, to solve the world's problems. We can't afford to be limited by sexism, racist, and gender gaps.

•  Each “original” portrait will cost $1,000 ( $200 per APC woman --5 APC women) plus cost of shipping and handling 
•  If you are paid, where does the profits go to? You? An Organization? To me. The money is payment for my work. I was a journalist , national newspaper reporter, and an author and now a painter; commissions are how I earn my living to help support myself and my family. Once the project gains ground and starts to generate a profit, I’ll donate a percentage of profits to United Way and a STEM-related girls organization.
•  When are the portraits delivered? During August and September. I need all the portraits with their patrons, ready to be hung Oct. 11.
•  Is that what “sponsorship” means – they pay you to do the portrait? Yes, and to create a 'virtual portrait' capturing a Great Woman's face and pioneering story for different youth organizations, like Girls Inc.
•  The portraits will be on canvas, either 16x20 or 30x40, oil and/or acrylic and oil pastel.
•  The individual patron, or their APC as a group, decides where the portrait will be hung.
•  And you are requesting videos of the portrait hanging which you’ll have on your website. Yes - or a simple photograph of the portrait being hung in the space chose by the patron/APC. To show other women who's participating, where they're hanging the Great Women, and what the portraits look like...
•  Are all the women portraits of those in STEM? Why? Great Women of STEM is my particular focus but the portraits are not limited to female STEM pioneers. Any historic woman worth knowing about is a potential subject for a Great Woman portrait.
•  You equate the project as a more effective DEI policy – explain how “revealing the female face of innovation to this generation and the next” can galvanize diversity, equality, and inclusion? I think Harvard's Iris Bohnet, author of 'What Works', perhaps sums it up best: I put her quote atop the project landing page
•  Do you see “diversity” as inclusion of women only – or inclusion of culturally/religiously diverse women?  Everyone. Certainly inclusion of culturally/religiously diverse women. Diversity is a reality; inclusion is a choice and inclusion means ... everyone, and the richness of perspective and experience and, potentially, innovation, that this affords.
•  How many portraits have you done so far? 25
•  Explain how you create the “virtual portrait” online vignette…..is it a website? The virtual portraits are/will be 1-2 minute long iMovies, available via Vimeo link which I’ll send to youth organizations identified by project participants.  So far I've created virtual portraits about chemists Alice August Ball, Dorothy Hodgkin and Gertude 'Trudy' Elion, and mathematician Diana Taimina - the latter Great Woman of STEM is living, at Cornell, and... while my physical and virtual portraits primarily focus on capturing the faces and stories of historic women we never learned about... I simply couldn't resist doing a 'virtual portrait' for youth about Diana. ( She's such a great example of how a major math riddle was, finally, solved when a woman looked at the problem through her female lens of experience. I won't spoil the surprise here. She's worth a peek: search ...Hyperbolic Crochet)
•  So the APC identifies a youth organization and you (Jo Napier’s company, Great Women Productions), will send that organization a 1-2 minute iMovie “which youth leaders can use in learning plans and as lessons tools to enable youth to learn about historic Great Women and the paths they’ve paved.” 
•  Explain how the youth groups have/will use the iMovie? Or how you envision them to? It's up to them, but I'll be tracking how they integrate it into lesson plans. The idea, honestly, wasn't mine - a leader with Girl Guides is the one who suggested I craft something that group leaders could use, as they wish, and integrate into weekly lesson plans.
•  How many, and which youth groups have been selected so far? The partners at an all-female law firm, MDW Law, chose Hope Blooms as their youth group. Some women want my suggestion on youth groups and I will be looking at building connections with Girl Guides, Techsploration (Girls in STEM group) and, in the U.S., the Girls Inc. chapters. 
•  Jackie, The first I'd heard of Girls Inc. was when a chapter rep in the Pacific Northwest contacted me to ask about my Smart Girl Bookmarks (I put the Great Women original portraits I create, with mini bios on the back, on to bookmarks... so that you can 'slip a little women's history into any book'. When they contacted me, asking if we could collaborate - perhaps I could conduct a workshop over zoom, etc.  - I instead suggested they ask their girls to research great women of the Pacific NorthWest. They came back to me with a half-dozen amazing history women we'd never heard about before. I included one of them, Dr. Marie Equi, in my latest portrait board collection - 'Mothers Of Science' - which is available to corporate clients who want a group of larger portraits, versus a simple painting.
•  You hope to create a “constellation of women” each year with 100-150 women (20-30 x 5 per patron group), internationally, to become patrons of The Great Women Portrait Project  -- as a “shared desire to educate colleagues and youth about women’s historic work in fields such as STEM.” 
•  Do you see the women’s portraits traveling through the world? That's a great question and the answer is: it depends on money. A travelling exhibit would require a major corporate sponsor to cover expenses, insurance, etc. But it's certainly possible
•  Will you have a map of the portraits installed around the world? Yes - I'm already working on an interactive map
•  When will you provide “a set of bookmarks capturing original portraits and stories of the Great Women honored through this portrait project – so that a little women’s history can be slipped into any book.”?  Not sure yet
•  Will you also provide these to libraries?I would love to 
•  Will this be an extra cost---or part of the portrait production?A set of great women bookmarks will be given to each portrait patron, and each APC member - so they can share with their kids, schools or local libraries.
•  You say: "I want to create a constellation of collaborators, who reveal the female face of innovation." Why is this important at this time in our history? 
•  Because this feels like the perfect moment for women to use their collective power to create change. 
•  I've learned, through my great women portrait work over the last dozen years, that women are hungry for their history. Women's accomplishments aren't well known because men have been the record keepers and this omission has bred a gap in our awareness around what 'women's work' really means. That gap, in our collective consciousness, feeds the lack of diversity, inclusion and equality in traditionally male-dominated areas of work and study, like STEM. To paraphrase anthropologist Margaret Mead: a small, thoughtful, collaborative group committed to action is a power tool for shaping cultural change. We now have ample evidence that gender diversity drives results – in productivity, profits and innovation. And right now, we need all our talent at the table to solve the world's problems. I think it’s that simple, and that serious. And I know art is a proven, powerful tool for social change.