2025 Pay Equity Roundtable: Top 4 Takeaways
Full Report Coming Soon.
The Forum hosted its 2025 Pay Equity Roundtable on Thursday, March 13 to paint a holistic picture of the nuanced issue of the gender pay gap and to provide solutions that could help Pennsylvanians achieve pay equity, which would boost our state's economy.
Our 2025 Pay Equity Roundtable was hosted at the Barnes Foundation and expertly moderated by The Forum's Pay Equity Leadership Chair Jeanine Conley Daves. During the discussion, we heard the perspectives of leaders from diverse fields from politics to law to business to social justice.
We asked our expert panelists what they would advocate for if they could make one single change to move the needle forward. Here’s what they said:
Key Takeaway 1) Kelly Sheard: “We asked our community at
WOMEN'S WAY what would most help them achieve economic stability and they said: advocating for guaranteed income and expanding the Child Tax Credit.”
Key Takeaway 2)
Charity Hughes, PhD, SHRM-SCP: “On the policy side, it’s pay transparency and on the organizational side it is having a strong philosophy around what we believe about compensation. We then need to communicate that and hold leaders accountable to that.”
Key Takeaway 3)
Maggie McDowell: “To understand the specific issue that is impacting the workforce within your organization you need to know what your data looks like. From there, you can identify the behaviors that need to be corrected.”
Key Takeaway 4) Representative
Jennifer O'Mara: “Changing who the policy makers are will have the biggest impact on seeing what we want to get done, get done.”
👀 Stay tuned for the Pay Equity Report which will be published in April and summarize the key findings of the insightful 2025 Pay Equity Roundtable.
For more info on The Forum's Pay Equity Report & Initiative visit our Pay Equity Page.
Thank you to Jefferson Health for sponsoring this important event. Thank you to Nina McNeely Diefenbach and her wonderful team at the Barnes Foundation for hosting us.
Thank you to The Forum’s Pay Equity Leadership Committee: Jeanine Conley Daves, Joslyn G. Ewart, AmyLynn Flood, Wendi Barish, Gina Cline Rose, Diane Cornman-Levy, Nancy Ezold, Beth E. Finn, Charity Hughes, Pamela Gwaltney, Tracey Jasey, Aurora Kripa, Ania Mikson, Richonda Pelzer, Marcine Pickron-Davis, Rasmeet Sachdeva, Meredith Sadoulet.
