One woman. One email.
Twenty women in a room.
Ten years later, more than a million dollars has followed.
She was maybe seven years old.
Right after college, Debra Dion Krischke lived in Iran for several years. She was introduced to life under veil, up close and personal.
One image never left her. A little girl, maybe seven, playing on a teeter totter. She was wearing a full-length veil, a shroud from head to toe, and she was trying to hold it in her teeth while she played.
"I didn't know then that that would be a defining moment for me, and an image that I would never forget."
Decades later, it became the catalyst. It is why this network gives globally as well as locally, and why Debra says the sentence she has said for years:
A woman's worst day here is infinitely better than a woman's best day in many parts of the world.
She had already raised millions. She wanted a better way to do it.
For decades, Debra was a women's advocate and fundraiser. She created the Glass Slipper Ball, a benefit featuring the best chefs in each city, and carried it from Pittsburgh across the country.
It ran eleven years in Colorado Springs alone, and across its lifespan it raised several million dollars for women's causes.
But galas take enormous muscle. Debra kept believing there had to be an easier way to raise serious money for women.
It was in Colorado Springs, producing the Glass Slipper, that she first heard about giving circles. Small groups of people gathering, pooling their money, and giving it to a cause they cared about. She loved it immediately.
Most giving circles funded local charities. Debra knew that if she started one in Pittsburgh, it would have to be both. Local and global.
Twenty women. One room.
Seventeen hundred dollars.
The first meeting was held at what was then the Sheraton in Cranberry, now the DoubleTree. Debra had used that hotel for years as headquarters for another business she produced, a five-day international tournament that brought thousands of people to Cranberry from around the world.
When she told the general manager she wanted to try a new kind of fundraiser, he said: whatever you want, we'll give you the space, you don't have to pay for it, happy to help you.
She sent one email to her mailing list. About twenty women came. Most of them knew her from years of events supporting women and were curious what this next idea would be.
That night they raised $1,700, and Debra asked every woman in the room to bring a friend to the July meeting.
By the end of the first year, they had given $13,000. But what mattered as much as the money was the education. Meeting after meeting, the room was learning about the nonprofits, locally and globally, doing the heavy lifting on behalf of women and girls.
The name was already there. The question came later.
In 2010, Debra published Inspired Entrepreneurs: A Collection of Female Triumphs in Business and Life. In 2011 and 2012, she produced conferences called Inspired Women in Business and Life. The branding already existed, so Inspired Women Paying It Forward made sense immediately.
The tagline took longer, and arrived unexpectedly. Several years after launching, during a Rasa Healing reading, Debra heard a question that stopped her.
“What can I offer that's comparable to the abundance I enjoy?”
Rasa Healing
She knew instantly it belonged to Inspired Women, and put it in her signature that same day. It is the perfect question, because everyone wants to believe they can make a difference. This network exists to hand them the opportunity.
Proximity is everything.
Debra expected the first chapter to eventually outgrow its room and split into a second meeting. That is not what happened.
After two years it became clear these meetings were about proximity. Women will give an hour to something close to home. So she set an intention for a chapter south of Pittsburgh, and a friend referred her to a friend: Kym Gable, then an anchor with CBS local news.
Westmoreland followed under Joy Klohonatz. Then Sewickley under Catherine Montague. Then Beaver, Pittsburgh Downtown, East End, and Fayette. In 2025, the network reached beyond western Pennsylvania for the first time and launched in Chicago.
Every chapter operates under one mission, and every chapter feels different, shaped by its leader and by the women who walk through the door.
"I don't think we initially realized how desperate women were to be seen and heard, if only for a minute."
Many women cannot imagine adding one more thing to their lives. Somehow, four times a year, they find an hour to step outside their own and help another woman.
The chapter leaders of the Inspired Women Network.
The first million.
Every contribution has been tracked since that first meeting in Cranberry. When the total began approaching one million dollars, the chapter leaders started watching it climb.
The network crossed the line in July 2026 and announced it at the Fayette chapter meeting at the end of that month, with most of the chapter leaders together for the photo. Every chapter celebrated it at their October meetings.
It represents far more than the dollars. It represents women's lives transformed, and grassroots nonprofits that could keep going because a room full of women decided to show up.
“I like to say it's our first million. Stay tuned.”
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
But its parts are really something.
If I could say one thing to every woman who has ever contributed, it would be simple.
Thank you.
Thank you for believing. Thank you for committing to helping women everywhere.
You never know whose life will be changed because another person, someone you will most likely never meet, had empathy. Compassion. Generosity. Kindness.
When I started this in 2015, I sent one email and twenty women showed up in a hotel meeting room in Cranberry. We raised seventeen hundred dollars that night. I had no idea what it would become.
What I know now is this. Women give so much to so many, and they rarely take the time to be filled up themselves. When you walk into one of our meetings, you get filled up. That is what allows you to keep giving.
And our common ground is the simplest thing in the world. We care about women and girls.
One hour, four times a year, one hundred dollars.
Our Collective Giving with Collective Impact works.