We were lucky to catch up with Carolyn Noe recently and have shared our conversation below.

Carolyn, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Our mission at Super Heroines, Etc. is to use the power of fandom to create an inclusive community that advocates for equity and representation. Over our twelve years in existence, this is our third mission. We intially started out wanting to change representation in media, but over the years, we found that our members are responsive to our welcoming and inclusive community tied to their fandom interests. They find space in our community to then find their activist voice and demand change.

Carolyn, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I moved to Oklahoma in 2011 and didn’t know anyone. While I was there, I connected with a few Meetup groups in the area to forge friendships with folks who had similar interests. When I moved back to St. Louis, I took the ideas of those Meetup groups to start my own Meetup group based on my own interests. Soon, we grew to over 1,600 people in our group and I realized that we had hit on something that people wanted to be part of. From there, we grew into a nonprofit organization and have served both St. Louis and Cincinnati. We’re most proud of the community we’ve created and the amazing stories of friendship that have come from our group.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Like many organizations, we had to pivot during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our group was highly event focused so that meant trying to do community building events online. While we had some initial success doing this during the pandemic, it wasn’t until after we emerged from social distancing that the group has really gone back to what it once was. Now we have to consider if we remain as an event-focused organization or if we try to build complementary programming so that should another disruption to our organization happen, we can be more resilient this time.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

We always get a big boost in interest when we attend in-person conventions. We try to attend things like Northern Kentucky Pride, CinCityCon, and other locally run events. This works well because instead of trying to find out people everywhere, we go to exactly where we know they will be.

Contact Info:

• Website: superheroinesetc.org
• Instagram: superheroinesetc
• Facebook: superheroinesetc