STATE COLLEGE — What started as a women’s conference in 2024 has grown into something more ambitious in Centre County: a collective built to help women connect, find their footing and turn passion into action.
Happy Valley Changemaker Collective based in State College, brings women together around shared interests, leadership development and community impact. Organized around six core collectives — entrepreneurship, wellness, sustainability, creation and expression, work, wealth and agency, and lifestyle and community — the group aims to create space for women to build relationships, explore ideas and take meaningful steps forward.
According to its website, the collective is “a values-forward community cultivating connection, resources, and shared leadership — so women can lead, create and thrive.” The organization says its collectives are free to attend.
The idea grew out of the Happy Valley LaunchBox’s WEConnect Women’s Conference in 2024, where organizers saw strong interest from women who wanted more than a one-time event.
“My day job is I’m the director of the Happy Valley LaunchBox,” Executive Director Elizabeth Hay said. “And the Happy Valley LaunchBox is a space in the community that’s set up to fill gaps in economic development. And one of the gaps we wanted to fill was resources for women in entrepreneurship.”
Hay said one feature of the conference asked women to identify the kinds of meaningful work they wanted to do in their communities. The response helped shape what would become the Changemaker Collective.
“People put their names up to these topics in the masses,” Hay said. “Thirty women that wanted to get together and talk about financial literacy. Forty women who wanted to get together and talk about wellness. So all the different topics of our collective sort of spun out of that.”
From there, organizers began bringing women together around those interests and asking who was willing to help lead the conversations.
Jennifer Eisenhuth, Chief People Officer and part of the group’s catalytic team, said the response to the WEConnect events made it clear there was a demand for something ongoing.
“The first WEConnect conference was fantastic and the second one doubled in size,” Eisenhuth said. “So we knew then, along with all the data collected at those conferences, that we needed to have more than just an annual event. We needed to have meaningful daily work. We needed to make a movement in the community.”
That sense of momentum continues to shape the collective’s mission.
Beth Shaha, the organization’s Chief Operating Officer, said one of the group’s goals is helping women recognize leadership in themselves, even if they do not initially see it.
“I actually think that’s one of our jobs, is helping them to see the leader from within,” Shaha said. “We have watched them even over the last year develop into leaders that are taking on more and more and more and empowering other leaders.”
She described leadership not as a title, but as something active and lived.
“It’s more a verb to me,” she said. “Leadership is a verb.”
The collective said it has hosted or listed 118 events since March 2025, engaged 426 community contacts through sign-ups, events or forms, and recorded 1,166 website sessions and 588 unique visitors in the past month. It also reported 89 collective sign-ups in the last 30 days.
Its leaders said those numbers reflect something many women in Centre County are looking for: connection, encouragement and a place to begin.
“I think women are craving connection, and I think they’re craving a space where they can come forward,” Shaha said. “We’re for each other. We’re not competing, and we’re simply saying this is an environment where you can come, you can feel alive, you can feel encouraged and we got your back.”
Eisenhuth said the impact has already become personal for some participants.
“We have literally had women come up to us already,” she said, “and made statements like, ‘This has changed my life.’”
The group’s leaders said the collective is designed to support women not only in professional growth, but in personal development and community engagement as well.
“We talk about the development of the whole woman,” Shaha said. “We really want them to be impacted and fed themselves as well. We want you to really feel fed and held here as well.”
The collective remains free to attend, with optional membership levels for those who want to invest further in the mission. Organizers said that accessibility is intentional and meant to reduce barriers for women who want to get involved.
“Everyone is welcome, everyone has potential, everyone can turn their passion into purpose, and let’s do it together,” Eisenhuth said.
For those interested in learning more, organizers said the easiest way to get involved is through the collective’s website and newsletter. The group also hosts a monthly Coffee Chat on the first Friday of each month from 10 to 11 a.m. at Good Day Cafe, which leaders described as a casual way for women to learn more and connect. A larger mixer is also scheduled for May 20 at 5:30 p.m. at Happy Valley LaunchBox.
More information is available at hvchangemakers.com or on their Facebook.
