Recognizing Four Other Changemaking Voices This Year

Our Changemaker selections each year are based on reader and team nominations, and generally chosen based on the work they have done that year to effect change. They tend to be people who are not generally recognized publicly for their community work. This year, we also wanted to give a quick nod to two people who have a lifetime of achievement, one who has been active in retirement and in these pages lately, and one relatively anonymous group effort.

Sue Abderholden receives farewell hugs from supporters at NAMIWalks Minnesota. Abderholden brought NAMIWalks to Minnesota 19 years ago. Photo Sarah Whiting

Sue Abderholden, NAMI

Sue Abderholden retired on October 15 after 24 years leading advocacy efforts as executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Health Minnesota chapter. She supported numerous laws on behalf of greater mental health in Minnesota, such as training for teachers, expanded crisis intervention services, and better care for individuals with mental illnesses who are incarcerated. She has been a champion for volunteer engagement, which enables a county to send out a peer specialist who works to engage people in treatment voluntarily for 90 days.

Her signature message: “Our mental health system is not broken — it was never built.”

Our 2024 interview with Abderholden was about the legislative policies she would like to see enacted. She cited strengthening peer specialist training to address the gaps in workforce numbers and having police forces contract with mental health counselors for crisis response. “The goal is not to build the police departments to be able to handle mental health crises. The goal is to build our mental health system.”

Abderholden also talked about the big gaps in early intervention. She said it was identifiable back in 2009 that youth with complex treatment needs require a place to go. “We still haven’t solved that problem.”

She says we also have known for decades that more than 70 percent of youth in the juvenile justice system have one or more mental illness diagnoses. “We aren’t intervening early so that these youth are in the mental health system instead of the juvenile justice system. … When we look at who is in jail and in prison, people who are homeless, it is often people with schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder. I get irate about it — how can we not invest at the early onset of these illnesses in evidence-based programs that work?”

Her NAMI MN successor is Marcus Schmit, who has been director of Hearth Connection, a nonprofit focused on ending long-term homelessness through supportive housing and partnerships. He is former assistant commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Corrections and director of advocacy at Second Harvest Heartland.

Minnesota Women’s Press members selected Abderholden as a 2024 Badass Minnesotan.

Pamela Zeller stands in front of materials generated at an event in which people wrote on Post-it notes where they had lived, or had lineage or travel experience, and used yarn to connect it back to Saint Paul. Photo Sarah Whiting

Pamela Zeller, WISE

Pamela Zeller is retiring this year after decades of work focused on empowering young immigrant and refugee girls and female-identified youth and adults. She is the outgoing director of Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment, which was created in 1995 by immigrant women who wanted more opportunities in education, employment, and economics. The Girls Getting Ahead in Leadership program focuses on self-empowerment, financial literacy, career exploration, and academic support for teenagers. The We Lead program takes them into post-high school education. Another program is focused on parent support and connections.

The Healthy Relationships program focuses on gender-based violence prevention. As Zeller said at our 40th anniversary celebration in April, “We found that no one is talking to these girls about healthy romantic relationships. It’s about ‘don’t have sex, don’t get pregnant.’ That’s it. So we talk to them about reproductive health and rights. We talk to them about consent and boundaries. What is power and control? What are some toxic behaviors?”

Mutual Aid: Trans Community Support

The Minneapolis-based PFund Foundation this year has supported grant funding for three Minnesota trans health care providers, as well as safety windows and security for a few trans-serving organizations. The PFund is a community-led foundation that was created in 1987 when queer folks raised money to support funeral costs and other needs during the AIDS crisis. In an LGBTQ Nation essay, the director wrote:

“Taking extra security measures is not the burden. The real danger is silence. The real threat is backing down when the stakes are this high.”

Photo Sarah Whiting

Nekima Levy Armstrong and the Target Boycott

Nekima Levy Armstrong has continued to step out this year to call out racism, including a widely shared editorial about media bias: “By repeatedly framing white violence as aberration and Black behavior as pathology, media coverage distorts public perception. It upholds the myth that white violence is understandable — even forgivable — while Black pain and Black humanity remain invisible.”

At our 40th anniversary celebration, she reminded the audience of the power to choose where to spend its consumer dollars. “Regardless of how society tries to shrink the power and the voices of women, we need to understand that the power of women is what makes this world go around. Without us, they wouldn’t exist.”

In alignment with two other local civil rights leaders, she organized a boycott to protest Target’s change of mind in 2025 about supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, which the Minneapolis-based company had pledged publicly after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. After the boycott started in January, Target stock dropped from $142.50 to $98. The company has had three quarters of revenue losses since then, and the CEO announced in August that he will step down in February 2026.

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