Jessica Roncarati-Howe Grateful to Uplift Women
By Joseph Bednar March 28, 2025
When Jessica Roncarati-Howe was honored as a member of the 40 Under Forty class of 2012, she was executive director of the AIDS Foundation of Western Massachusetts — a job with many hats, all of which she wore proudly.
As the foundation’s only paid staff member, she was in charge of marketing and development, administering the grant program, co-chairing most events, and overseeing a cadre of volunteers and interns.
The AIDS Foundation had three missions: providing financial assistance to about 100 patients a year for expenses like rent, utilities, and medications; educational components, including the training of young peer educators to bring awareness into high schools and colleges; and referral services to help people with the disease access healthcare and other resources.
And those efforts made a difference, and even saved lives, considering Greater Springfield had the highest rate of infection in the state at the time.
“It was so gratifying to help them, not just get the services and supports they needed, but build their level of dignity and quality of life,” Roncarati-Howe recalled. “That work really was my heart for the longest time. It taught me a lot about this community, its diversity, how it feels to meet somebody where they are in their lives, as opposed to holding expectations of where people think they should be, and then helping them from that point. It was a remarkable bit of education for me. And that’s something that I wanted to carry into my career going forward.”
Eventually, the heavy workload of that job wasn’t meshing with her home life as well as she would have liked, and she didn’t want either to suffer. “I left the AIDS Foundation because I had a responsibility to both the people who relied on the foundation and my daughter, and I couldn’t juggle both without doing a disservice to one or the other.”
So she moved on to other jobs (and had “surprise twins” along the way), but nothing felt like the right fit — until she became involved with Dress for Success of Western Massachusetts, which she serves as executive director today.
“A friend of mine who was president of the board at the time met with me and asked if I might be interested in a position as program coordinator, but she couldn’t promise me anything except complete uncertainty and lousy pay,” she laughed.
Yet, the executive director at the time felt the organization was on the cusp of rapid growth, and she was right — eventually. Roncarati-Howe’s initial experience was something different, as she came on board in January 2020, just before the world shut down.
“My job went from defining existing programs and building more programs to figuring out what our participants actually needed in that moment and building from there,” she recalled. “And that meant scaling back and scrapping some things, going in different directions that we never expected that we would go. And, lo and behold, we ended up not only successfully delivering programs and services through the pandemic, but also growing.”
From program coordinator, she quickly advanced to director of programs and operations, and began to feel the same sense of ‘right place, right time’ that she had with the AIDS Foundation.
“The more things changed in the world, the more important it became to me to do meaningful work again. And now, I can’t see myself contentedly doing anything else.”
In January 2024, when the executive director position opened up, Roncarati-Howe was named to that role in an interim fashion, and the job became official two months later.
“We’ve all been in a position where we’ve needed help, we’ve needed support, and we haven’t known what the next steps are. To be able to provide that for women is an honor. That’s why I do this.”
It’s impactful work, with services that include the well-known boutique where women can get professional attire for interviews and after landing jobs, and also the Foot in the Door program that focuses on work readiness, from résumé writing and interview skills to networking, workplace etiquette, professional attire, and how to navigate difficult situations on the job.
Dress for Success also partners with a number of organizations, including hiring agencies, employers, and community colleges, to make sure as many people as possible graduate and move right into further training, higher education, or a job within three months of graduating.
“Instead of having siloed programming, we’ve developed a model that we call the continuum of support,” Roncarati-Howe said. “We help a woman from the moment they walk in the door, wherever they are in their life and whatever their needs might be, to whenever they feel that they don’t need us anymore. In some cases, that’s eight to 10 years.”
The program also provides basic computer literacy and a laptop, courtesy of Tech Foundry; basic financial wellness with Liberty Bank; and preparation for the National Career Readiness Certificate exam, not to mention the Margaret Fitzgerald Mentorship Program, a year-long, one-on-one mentorship with a professional or retired professional woman in the community.
The work of Dress for Success of Western Massachusetts is being amplified and expanded with the recent opening of its new Women’s Career Center, which will make the nonprofit’s workforce-development programming available to hundreds more individuals each year, both on a drop-in basis and through regularly scheduled workshops.
The organization will celebrate all of this, and its impact, at its 25th-anniverary Common Threads gala coming up on Thursday, April 17.
“We really try to ensure that, no matter who’s coming to us, the answer is never ‘no,’” Roncarati-Howe said. “It’s just so heartwarming and inspirational and gratifying. It’s also humbling because our perspective is that we’re serving. We are grateful to be able to do this work and do good for people who need us because we’ve all been in a position where we’ve needed help, we’ve needed support, and we haven’t known what the next steps are. To be able to provide that for women is an honor. That’s why I do this.”