Jersey City Women’s Advisory Board Aim To Be ‘Links And Chains’ Of Change

Photo by Neidy Gutierrez / SOC Images.

Dear women of Jersey City, you are seen and loved.

That’s a sentiment that continued to echo from three board members of the Jersey City Women’s Advisory Board (JCWAB) including Chairwoman Tami Weaver-Henry, Vice Chairwoman Chelsea Duffy and Secretary Tere Fox. While the three represent just a third of the 11-member volunteer board, the women emphasized to Slice of Culture a collective message: JCWAB gives all women in Jersey City a seat at the table—whether that be law or decision-making, getting a chance at opportunities to be supported and assisted and, but not limited to, getting involved in giving back to local community efforts. 

“The Jersey City Women’s Advisory Board is here for every single woman in this city so that their voices are amplified because there are a lot of women that are on mute and not because they want to be, [it’s] because they don’t know any different. So we are here to be that light for them in this darkness,” Weaver-Henry said.

“It is our responsibility as the women of Jersey City on this board to liaise with our government officials and our elected officials to bring that betterment to the women of Jersey City… there’s so many concerns and women are complex,” Duffy added. “It’s more than just being a mom. It’s more than just being an entrepreneur. It’s more than just serving boards. We wear a thousand hats and so it’s really our responsibility to hit every single one of those buckets.”

‘We Are The Domino’

The Jersey City Women’s Advisory Board was founded in 2022 by Jersey City Council President Joyce Watterman. In a previous interview with the council president and now city mayoral candidate, Watterman told Slice of Culture that she knew she always wanted to create a women’s advisory board since taking office within the city council in 2013. 

But the timing wasn’t right. 

“I want people to know you may wanna do something, it may not be the proper timing, but it will present [itself] at the right timing, and then you have to move on it,” Watterman previously said. 

And that right time was after the #MeToo movement went viral in 2017, which encouraged millions, especially women, to speak up about their experiences of sexual harassment and/or assault. 

The JCWAB wasn’t officially founded until 2022 when a motion was passed by the Jersey City Council and then signed off by current Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop. Both Watterman and Fulop are recognized as standing board members of the organization.

“The system sometimes is very difficult and being in politics, I keep saying, ‘oh my God, I’m in a system that sometimes it seems like it’s so hard to put anything good forward,’ but because you care about people, you continue to press… you have to continue to press. Just like I said, I created the Women’s Advisory Board [because it] never exist[ed] in Jersey City. So I [had] to keep pressing,” Watterman had said.

Fast forward to today, in 2025, JWAB displays their vision as: “To advocate, create awareness and promote women’s issues, recognize and highlight the accomplishments of women in the community, & to provide opportunity to liaise with other women organizations, and assist in providing solutions for the women of Jersey City.”

Weaver-Henry, one of the JWAB’s founding board members, told Slice of Culture that the piece that resonates the most with her is letting women know that “their labor is not in vain.” Duffy, another one of the founding members, built on her co-chair’s words and explained the moves that the JWAB makes in order to make women feel that they’re being supported.

“What we do is we garner the voices of these women and children and we put them in the pot and we dissect them intricately and we attack. How can we help? What can we do? And then that strategy really creates, again, the pebble in the pond ripple effect,” she emphasized. 

“We are the domino that then hits the next domino, so on and so forth. And so sometimes we have so many ideas that we can’t do them all, but the momentum alone allows for a tsunami-like wave of energy to come in. And it really helps other women get involved without even having to push or prod or fight for a path.”

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Bring Your Chair To The Table

And each of the three board members found their own path to JCWAB.

Weaver-Henry, a Jersey City native, wears many hats—jokingly pointing to one on her head—which, in addition to being the chairwoman of JCWAB, includes: 

• Founder and CEO of New Jersey’s first Christian-based home care agency for the last 17 years
• Jersey City pastor
• Chaplain for the Jersey City Police Department
• Board member and Chaplain for the National Coalition of 100 Black Women
• President of Angels Care Home Healthcare
• Board member of Save A Few
• Mom of seven children, including one deceased
• And more

She noted that she was one of the advocates that wrote a letter to entice the council to pass a resolution for the board to be created. When it was passed, Watterman was having a conversation about the next steps and Weaver-Henry said, “I would love to be on it,” but Watterman thought she was joking. When Weaver-Henry resigned from her position on the Jersey City Environmental Board, she made it happen.

“I told them I resigned because I want to be on this board. Didn’t know that I was gonna be the chair. This is my second term, elected as chair,” she added. “I just knew that we needed to stand up for all the women here in Jersey City that did not have voices. And so when we came together and we had to come up with a mission and a vision, the mission was to give all of the women in Jersey City a seat at the table.”

Duffy joined the table in the early stages too. The longtime Jersey City resident has been involved in local issues like community issues, women’s issues and kid-oriented issues. She attended a number of events held by Watterman and other council members on how to give back to the community for its families, kids and women and, eventually, it led to her being asked to join the inaugural women’s advisory board. 

Aside from becoming the co-chair, she also:

• Has experience in professional sports
• Has a license in retail cannabis and will be opening a retail shop soon
• Freelancer in the Jersey City community
• Mom to a three-month old and nine-year-old dog

For Fox, she’s one of the most recent members of the JCWAB, but Weaver-Henry and Duffy advocated highly of her passion and commitment.

Fox, who is originally from New Orleans, said she’s been in love with her neighborhood ever since. She has been in the community running local mom and parent groups on 11 platforms with 70,000 members across the board. She added that she began to attend local events, including government meetings and town halls, and fell in love with Watterman’s words, which she resonated deeply with. 

She saw the JCWAB come together and their founding members’ swearing in ceremony. When a recent opportunity came to her to join the board, Fox “couldn’t scream ‘Yes’ loud enough,” she laughed.

And all three women have brought their chairs to the table from the Bergen-Lafayette area of Jersey City, which is where each of them reside and have been for a long time. 

Weaver-Henry shouted: “Can anything good come out of Bergen-Lafayette?”

“Obviously,” the three of them echoed.

‘Push And Propel’ Jersey City Women

The Jersey City Women’s Advisory Board has a number of resources. That includes help for:

• Substance Abuse
• Domestic Violence
• Autism
• Education
• Mental Health
• Period Poverty
• Parenting
• Homelessness and Shelter
• Sexual Violence and Awareness
• Liaising with Jersey City and Hudson County organizations 

Another topic that the JCWAB advocates heavily for is pay transparency for women. According to a 2023 U.S. Census Bureau study, full-time year-round working women earned 83% of what their male counterparts made; this is something that the JCWAB is working against, as listed in their CEDAW resolution, which stands for “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.” 

At their third annual SHERO Gala, the board had all attendees read the CEDAW Rights so that every woman and person in the room understood what they have rights to. The gala, which started in the pandemic, is meant to bring “women together and we literally get to bring them together for a free event… to love on them and to let them know we see you. We acknowledge who you are. We acknowledge what you’re doing and we wanna shine a light on it,” Weaver-Henry said.

In addition to the gala and its list of resources, the JCWAB has an ongoing EmpowHERment panel that features different women of the community; self-defense classes; a mental health sound bath wellness workshop in May; and an annual pelvic and breast cancer screening in partnership with the Jersey City Medical Center—all for free.

To get involved, you can visit https://www.jcwab.org/ and reach out to them on Instagram @jcwomensadvisoryboard. 

When asked about why the JCWAB is important, especially in today’s society, this is what they had to say:

“Why is it significant? Because it took this long to form a women’s board in the most diverse city in the nation. Why is it significant? Because look at us and look at the women that we serve. We don’t all look alike. We’re all different. We all come from different walks of life, different cultures, different backgrounds, different religions, different status and different money, but we all live alike in this city together to flourish. That is what this board represents. It’s significant because we symbolize a beacon of hope. We symbolize resiliency. We symbolize resources in a helping hand. We symbolize the olive branch between our communities.We symbolize a safe space for women at all times 24/7, 365 [days]. And that is why we are significant.”

Chelsea Duffy

“It’s important to have this board for representation and then also just to keep as a reminder. It’s important that we remind each other that while everything is happening all around us, that there is this stability of women who are coming together. We’re fighting behind the scenes. We’re working behind the scenes. There’s a place to go to, there’s a place to come together, there’s a place to network. And it all starts right here with this board. And it just continues. It’s just this ongoing. I love that.”

Tere Fox

“Each woman is unique on this day, in this society, in this country. I may be the loud, boisterous one… I have my coach here, she’s a quiet storm… We have our secretary slash all the other hats that she wears, she is superwoman in itself. Together, we are those links and the chain of change that we wanna see in the United States. The significance is if we can all lock arms together with every woman in Jersey City, can you imagine what we can do and what they can’t do to us once we come together, that’s the significance. And right now, everything is being threatened… Today we are fighting together for all things women.”

Tami Weaver-Henry