Click here to view the interview of Girls Who Code!

Girls Who Code. I have four sons and I love them all so much. I want them to have every opportunity in this world. And they do. They won the lottery in life. They are white males. At the top of the food chain in our society. 
So yes, I support women and girls because I know that we have to work a little harder, go against the good ole boy club, spend our days and years living #metoo moments, and give birth and feed babies while trying to maintain equality in the workplace and often sacrificing either family or career to succeed at either. We need role models and safe places to grow and achieve things those before us rarely achieved. So yes, Girls Who Code, Girls on the Run, women in the military, and all things girl, you are amazing. I want to help you have every opportunity in this world, too.

Mentoring girls is important to me. Having role models and mentors has helped me succeed and it is exciting to give back in this way. Our Girls Who Code Chapter starte January 2020 at Array! shortgo.co/array-announces-girl-who-code-chapter-in-cheyenne/

So honored and humbled to be included in this!

The first episode in Season 2 of This is Me Podcast, features guest, Amy Surdam.Amy has proudly lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming since age 11. She graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1996 with a BSN, and in 2004 with an MSN. She is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Wyoming Army National Guard, Family Nurse Practitioner, co-owner of Stitches Acute Care Center (with her husband) and The Array School of Technology and Design where is the COO. Amy’s talent and passion lies in strategic planning, public relations, public speaking, leadership, connecting people together, and making a difference. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends, running, and creating a better tomorrow. Join us as we hear Amy speak about living a healthy life-style, her near-death experience, her run for mayor and so much more! 

​https://soundcloud.com/thisismepodcast/amy-surdam

This article is very much the truth. As true as it is, and as disappointed as I was...am...that all of this occurred, I do want to say that I am looking forward to the second column by Reed in which he will talk about a new solution for the hole/Hynds. Life is too short to live in the past or to hold on to anger. I'm hopeful for the future and optimistic that one day, there will be an amazing children's museum in Cheyenne and downtown revitalization. 

Friday, June 14, 2019

​Business leaders created "nightmare" at "The Hole"This is the first of two columns on the downtown “hole” and the neighboring Hynds Building.

BY D. REED ECKHARDT
It’s a harsh thing when your words come back to haunt you.
            Consider this from an editorial in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle:
            “Our ‘nightmare’ scenario for downtown Cheyenne is that plans to renovate the Hynds Building will fall apart, and the ‘hole’ next door on West Lincolnway will remain unfilled.”
            These words were printed on Aug. 7, 2016. That’s when the 

Thanks to the city's business leaders, "The Hole" remains empty.
newspaper joined linked arms with the business community insiders at Cheyenne LEADS and the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce as well as with then-mayoral candidate Marian Orr and other naysayers. Their mission: to bully the proposed Children’s Museum of Cheyenne out of “The Hole” downtown. 
All of them had imbibed the snake oil peddled by developer David Hatch. They were drunken with the idea that the Hynds Building could be turned into a palace for lawyers with “The Hole” as their private parking pen. 
These community “leaders” applied their considerable influence to shame and embarrass museum creator and also then-mayoral candidate Amy Surdam into submission. 
After all, Surdam was not one of “theirs.” She and the Downtown Development Association that she headed wanted the museum in “The Hole,” and they refused to be pushed around by the Chamber and LEADS. The insiders didn’t like this uppity woman, and she was standing in the way of their buddy’s big plans. She had to go.
Never mind that the Children’s Museum was a perfect fit for “The Hole.” Its potential as an engine to drive a downtown renaissance was immense. But no, the big timers were willing to drive a stake through its heart to promote the scheme of a man with major dreams and minor means.
The WTE willingly joined in, arguing the Children’s Museum was an extravagant boondoggle. A once-proud newspaper, which for more than 15 years had supported public efforts to create a thriving downtown, flew into the arms of the city’s business leaders. It has been there ever since.
And the visionless Orr was more than willing to pile on. She played to the naysayers, speaking against the museum and the proposed tax to fund it. Then she came up with a surprise move: She offered free land elsewhere for the museum. She pretended this was a grand gesture, but it was just another way to get the museum out of “The Hole” for her establishment buddies and to take down Surdam at the same time.  
That Hatch never was going to be able to cobble the money together to develop the Hynds was obvious. He never would put enough of his own skin in the game, but he was very willing to suckle at the government’s teat. Uh, no. No agency was drinking that snake oil. Finally, in the fall of 2017, he threw in the towel.
And so, if you walk downtown now, you can see the WTE’s “nightmare” -- an empty hole and a vacant Hynds. The irony is, the newspaper played a major role in its creation.
As you stand in front of Ernie November’s downtown and look across the street at the still-empty “hole,” you have to wonder: What if the Chamber, and LEADS, and the WTE, and Mayor Orr, and the other naysayers had stood tall for the museum? Perhaps the tax would have failed, but the museum still might be in place, fighting for funding and trying to move ahead. And perhaps a thriving museum might have pumped fresh life into the Hynds.
The silence from all those who perpetuated this farce is deafening. Hatch is gone and LEADS, and the Chamber and Orr have done nothing except put up a pretty fence to hide the ugliness they helped to maintain.
Five years ago, these same people were saying that without something in “The Hole,” downtown never would prosper. Now it is not even as issue for them? 
But perhaps their silence is driven by embarrassment. Embarrassed that they got taken by Hatch. Embarrassed that they bullied a project out of “The Hole” that might have saved downtown. Embarrassed that they browbeat someone who really cared about downtown, Surdam, to the sidelines. 
As well they should be.
§   
So what’s next for “The Hole” and the Hynds? 
There is one idea that makes a lot of sense. Come back next time to find out what it is.
            
D. Reed Eckhardt is the former executive editor of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

As Wyoming begins preparations to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Louisa Swain casting a ballot in Laramie, I’ve been thinking ab- out the many women in Wyoming who impacted the trajectory of our state’s future by becoming the first to achieve a responsibility traditionally reserved for men.
​First woman to serve on a jury. First woman to serve as a bailiff. First woman to serve as a justice of the peace. First to become a statewide-elected official.
Look them up – their images portray them as grim-faced, stern women, separated from us by both years and photographic style. But don’t let this obscure the fact that these women were not two-dimensional characters. They cared deeply about improving their communities. The reasons why they were willing to break glass and pursue change led them to be passionate about imagining how a problem could be solved.
Maybe it isn’t just grim-faced sternness we see in those old photographs. Maybe it’s also unyielding grit.
One of the things I love about Wyoming – that sets it apart from many places I’ve lived – is how accessible change-making really is here. You don’t have to wait around for change to happen by accident. Belonging to an elite club of do-ers is unnecessary.
See a problem? You can literally decide to do something about it and then do that thing. It isn’t always easy or immediate, but a healthy dose of unyielding grit, handed down through generations, makes it possible.
I know because there is proof – from the earliest days of Wyoming’s existence to the present day, where Wyoming women are quietly (and sometimes not quietly at all) imagining ways to improve their communities.
The fourth annual Connect2Women conference was held last week in Cheyenne, and I was amazed, delighted and inspired by the many local women who shared their stories of a quest for change.
Heather Fleming and Kari Roden of the nonprofit WY Lit are accidental activists who came together to change how literacy skills are taught in Wyoming schools; while their work is just beginning, they’ve already proven themselves fierce advocates of a better way of doing business. Their advocacy brought the successful passage of Wyoming House Bill 297, requiring school districts to assess the specific skills predictive of third-grade reading proficiency. The ripple effects of improved literacy skills through evidence-based research and instruction will be staggering.
Valerie Colgate and Karen Fettig are ardent advocates for bringing awareness – and an end – to the devastating issue of human exploitation and sex-trafficking, which is an all-too-real problem in Wyoming and internationally. A global health professional, Valerie serves as a medical liaison for Destiny Rescue, regularly traveling from Wyoming to Cambodia to combat the effects of exploitation on girls, women and their communities. Karen Fettig works tirelessly within the state to bring awareness to this issue, partnering with law enforcement to hold workshops about identifying the warning signs of trafficking, exploitation and trauma.
Neither of these women set out to do this work originally, but the problem was simply too big to ignore. So, they didn’t.
Stacy Strasser founded the Unaccompanied Students Initiative because she couldn’t live with the status quo of homelessness in Wyoming. Her efforts to provide actual homes for adolescents without guardians so they can graduate from high school in a safe, consistent environment has led to a near-impossible level of community collaboration and generosity that is already making a difference for every single student served by the program. Stacy did not allow initial failure to deter her laser-focused vision of a better Wyoming.
Amy Surdam and her husband are reimagining how health care is provided in Wyoming through their acute care center, Stitches, a challenge so great that it seems insurmountable – until it isn’t. Their approach is both inventive and innovative, and has created statewide partnerships to provide telemedicine to previously underserved rural areas. Additionally, their partnership with LIV Health and Wyoming Breast Cancer Initiative will provide access to counseling for patients diagnosed with breast cancer (and their families) without the added stressor of hundreds of travel miles.
In our kitchen hangs a treasured piece of artwork made for my family by artist Amos Kennedy. On the backdrop of a Wyoming road map, he handset the words of Sojourner Truth and printed with a vintage letterpress: “If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it.”
Something about this sentiment pierces my heart. Just like Sojourner Truth knew in the 1800s, Wyoming women know today that change comes not from talking, but from doing.
No one must settle for the status quo here, and that is a treasured right we should never take for granted.
Elizabeth Dillow is a writer, photographer and graphic designer in Cheyenne who can be reduced to tears by stories of women changing the world. She can be reached at edillow@mac.com.

Nymbl Raises $300K For Print-On-Demand Ecommerce Platform
CHEYENNE, WYO. (PRWEB) JANUARY 09, 2019
Nymbl.io (Nymbl, LLC), recently raised $300k to launch the world’s first all-in-one Ecommerce platform focused on the print-on-demand (POD) merchandise industry. With the recent closing of this Pre-Seed round, including $100k from Casper’s Breakthrough 307 fund, a $50K grant from the Kickstart:Wyoming program, and several other prominent angel investors, Nymbl is set to cause a disruption in the POD Ecommerce industry.
"We saw an opportunity to solve the complexities involved with setting up and operating a merchandise Ecommerce shop," said Zac Folk, Nymbl's founder and CEO. "With this additional funding we can continue to deliver on that promise, while refining our product offering and market fit with our beta customers as we prepare to scale."
As Nymbl begins the roll out of its platform, the investment funds will be used to hire additional staff to expand the company’s reach, bolster the platform’s performance, and market to its target segments, while ensuring top-notch support is available to its customers. The target market for the Nymbl platform includes influencers, celebs, entrepreneurs, artists, photographers, bands, businesses, non-profits, schools, printers, and sports teams.
“What Nymbl has developed over the past couple of years is hugely impressive,” stated Brett Florio, CEO of Foxy.io, an Ecommerce tech company with over $2bn processed. “As a technology partner, customer, and investor, Foxy is excited to witness Nymbl’s growth, and will be actively referring interested customers to the turn-key platform.”
Nymbl’s Board of Directors includes Zac Folk, Karl Kaplan, Shawn Mills, Amy Surdam, and Brian Worthen.
About Nymbl:
The Nymbl Platform allows clients to sell their merchandise via an easy-to-use service, with no up-front investment or inventory risk, while Nymbl’s fulfiller network prints and ships our products on-demand around the globe.
Nymbl features a proprietary Ecommerce CMS and software technologies that can take any online artwork and automatically convert it into a merchandise store via API. Sign-up and installation for an online merch store is free and takes less than a couple of minutes. The platform also boasts a proprietary automated product image mockup system, a simple web page builder tool, and is the world’s first all-in-one solution focused on the print-on-demand market.