Jacki Zehner on Women Supporting Women: Sistering Up

Jacki Zehner has been a member of Park City Community Foundation’s Women’s Giving Fund since its founding in 2014 and has exemplified the values of purpose driven friendships at every step of her life and career.  

“Many of my female friends, including many in the Women’s Giving Fund, share a commitment to help make our communities stronger, with a particular focus on women and girls,” Jacki said. “This is my life’s work for 30 years — to use my time, treasure, and talent for the advancement of women and girls.”  

Jacki is proud to see how much Women’s Giving Fund has expanded since its inception, far passing the original 1,000 members goal. She has a long history as a champion for women’s funds, dating back to her work as a board member of the Women’s Funding Network in the early 2000s, and believes they play an important role within communities. 

“I think it’s such a catalyst for new relationships, and it solidifies old ones,” Jacki said.  

Originally a mountain girl from British Columbia, Jacki was drawn to Park City with her husband and children in 2010. For the first eight years of living here she served in a leadership role building Women Moving Millions, the largest network in the world of women funding women philanthropists based in New York City. Her local community involvement was more limited, but included serving as a trustee of the Sundance Institute and co-founding their Women at Sundance initiative. She left Women Moving Millions in 2018 to spend time traveling with her daughter during her gap year and recenter her work in Utah. 

Jacki, whose extensive list of accomplishments includes being the first female partner of Goldman Sachs, was fired up to use her expertise in philanthropy and finance to support local women, especially after finding out that Utah ranks at the bottom of the country in terms of gender-gaps. So, she created a network called She Place and later She Money. Her organizations’ goals are to increase the financial engagement and agency of women in Utah.  

“There are massive inequities and it’s up to us as women to change that and it’s not about pushing down men or being anti-male or anything like that, it’s about lifting up and supporting other women,” Jacki said.  

She Place helps women connect to support each other, they host socials and have an online platform for networking. She Money offers financial content, experiences and community, focused on money and financial well-being. With a following of nearly 800,000 on LinkedIn, and a newsletter that reaches 160,000 people worldwide, Jacki is one of the top financial voices on the platform. Jacki encourages women who are a part of her platform to join Women’s Giving Fund and get involved with local organizations serving women in the community, because giving is one of the important ways money flows.  

She lifted up Peace House, an organization aimed at helping the survivors of domestic violence and a Women’s Giving Fund grant recipient in 2017, as an example of a nonprofit that directly supports women.   

“That organization cannot exist without philanthropic support,” Jacki said. “I know when I help Peace House, I am helping a woman through probably the most difficult time in her life to hopefully come out the other side — and coming out the other side means you have financial resources to build a life post their abuse situation. So, I think philanthropy in this case is directly tied to that woman’s economic liberation.”    

Giving is one of the seven money moves She Money informs about, and not the only one that can be aligned with your values. Investing and spending can also be done with a gender-lens.  

“Buying products and services [from] women owned businesses right here in Utah is an easy and meaningful way to use the power of our purses,” Jacki said.  

Jacki said her friends have come together to support her as she gets ready to put together the She Money Summit. The one-and-a-half-day event will feature 14 experts in money, including the 43rd Treasurer of the United States, Rosie Rios, whose signature is on over $1.3 trillion of currency. Others include Joline Godfrey, one of the first people to write a “how to” about raising financially capable children. The format is TED-like talks combined with practical workshops on topics such as entrepreneurship, parenting, giving, spending, negotiating, and investing, and a dance party too.

“Creating this event, with the support of Zions Bank and the State Legislature, has been a huge undertaking,” Jacki said. “It will be an epic day all centered around money, which I like to say is not optional. The better we are with money, the better the quality of our lives.” 

Jacki celebrates women, especially in Park City, showing up to create actionable change and impact.  It’s these women she surrounds herself with who create a sisterhood. She made a framework called “Sistering-Up,” which has varying levels of engagement: connect, amplify, champion, and partner.  

“Sistering is actually a verb, which means to make stronger,” Jacki said. “When as women we really show up for each other, I call it sistering up.” 

“My friends see my commitment and they show up, they buy tickets, they amplify it out on social media,” Jacki said. “If I had to put purpose driven friendships in a catchphrase, I would call it sistering up.”  

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