About

Powerful networking is a great way to expand our influence and raise the status of women

The Utah Women’s Forum (UWF) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional network for women. UWF draws a diverse group of people together to foster new ideas and to connect professional women who have the desire to share and develop common goals.

This women’s organization is committed to enhancing the status of women, and their interests, and providing opportunities for members to become better acquainted with one another through special events, discussions of fascinating topics over forum lunches, and greater awareness of opportunities for engagement in the community.

Through topics ranging from The Risk of Cheap Water, and Being Transgender, to Feminism Then and Now, and Pelicans of the Great Salt Lake, UWF members expand knowledge and work together to enhance all women’s lives.

UWF is a nonprofit 501C-4 organization that engages in advocacy only in the broadest sense of support for other women.

HISTORY

The Utah Women's Forum began informally in the mid-1980s, spearheaded by public relations specialist Mary Kay Lazarus, who had learned of an organization of prominent professional women in Washington, D.C.

Lazarus began discussing the idea of forming a similar group in Salt Lake City with Genevieve Atwood, the state Geologist and a former member of the Utah House of Representatives, and Karen Shepherd, the editor of Network Magazine who would eventually become a U.S. congresswoman for Utah's 2nd District. 
 
Their focus was to find a way for professional women in Utah's diverse workforce to get to know one another and support each other in their professional positions. Bylaws were adopted in 1986, and the group has grown to an invited membership of over 160.

SOME OF THE FOUNDING MEMBERS 

Genevieve Atwood, Aileen Clyde, Mary Kay Lazarus, Karen Shepherd