Sophia Academy is thrilled to celebrate Barbara Papitto (above left) and Ysanel Torres (above right) as our 2023 Women of Wisdom. This honor recognizes women who exemplify Sophia’s social justice mission and core values of courage, responsibility, respect, and peace.
“With their shared dedication to empowering communities of color in Rhode Island, Barbara and Ysanel are innovators for social justice, and we are delighted and honored to celebrate them,” said Maura Farrell, Head of School. “In very distinctive ways, they light a path for Sophia students and other young people with their lives of passion, service, and advocacy.”
Barbara and YSANEL will be honored at the Women of Wisdom Celebration event on May 8, 2023, at the WaterFire Arts Center. They join a group of impressive Women of Wisdom from previous years, including Suzanne Murray, Joan Wernig Sorensen, Anne Szostak, Liz Chace, Suzanne Magaziner, Sister Mary Reilly, Stacey Abrams, Toots Zynsky, and Latsany Lopez.
Please visit the Women of Wisdom Celebration page for event updates and, beginning in April, to purchase tickets.
Barbara is the founder and a trustee of the Papitto Opportunity Connection, (POC) a non-profit private foundation dedicated to listening and working together with Rhode Island’s Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities to empower and create individual success stories by investing in education, job skills training and entrepreneurial ventures. A core focus of POC’s work is supporting children impacted by systemic racial injustice in Rhode Island. She also founded and leads Read to Succeed, whose mission is to imbue young people with a love of reading, and motivate them to maintain literacy skills over the summer months. Since its establishment in 2008, Read to Succeed has funded $2.2 million in scholarships for young Rhode Islanders. Since Sophia joined Read to Succeed in 2021, Barbara has visited the school many times to deliver the students’ Read to Succeed books and to honor those who complete the program each year. Her generosity, sense of humor, and humility have touched the Sophia community.
YSANEL, a 2011 Sophia Academy graduate, is an Afro-Caribbean artist who advocates for social justice and gives voice to unsung communities of color—particularly women—through public art, performance, and installations. YSANEL grew up on the South Side of Providence in a community of people from Dominican Republic, where most of her is family is from. “Lucky for me, Providence was (and still is) entirely a melting pot of various diasporas, so I learned arts and culture through both a personal and collaborative lens,” she reflects. Her career as a public artist started at 16, when she began transforming utility boxes on Providence streets with her project Sound the Alarm on Female Empowerment, portraits of inspirational women. In 2017, the City of Providence awarded her its first Public Art residency. Working with youth and staff at the Madeline Selim-Rogers Recreation Center, YSANEL designed and painted Madeline, a permanent mural at the Rogers center.
This event supports Sophia Academy’s tuition-free program, whose mission is to engage girls from low-income families on a joyful quest for self-discovery and opportunity through a middle school education grounded in social justice. If you are interested in sponsoring the Women of Wisdom Celebration, please email Heidi at hfraitzl@sophia-academy.org to learn more.