Two groups are working to create equal opportunities for Black and Latina women in the trucking industry.

The Truist Foundation has pledged $1.5 million to the Accion Opportunity Fund to support the Down Payment Assistance Program, which aims to empower minority women by helping them become first-time truck owners and entrepreneurs.

Luz Urrutia, CEO of the Accion Opportunity Fund, said the step is crucial in bridging the equity gap for underrepresented groups.

"America is in the midst of an entrepreneur boom with record numbers of small businesses, and they're led by women and people of color," Urrutia pointed out. "At the same time, there is a $130 million financing gap for small businesses who need less than $100,000 in this country."

Urrutia noted since 2010, Accion Opportunity Fund has invested $360 million in the trucking industry, providing crucial support to more than 6,000 first-time truck buyers through loans.

Nicole Ward, president of the African American Women Trucking Association and a trucking entrepreneur from Georgia, has firsthand experience with the challenges faced by women of color breaking into the trucking industry.

Despite encountering setbacks when trying to purchase her first truck, Ward persevered and now advocates for others in her community to do the same.

"I thought it would be as easy as purchasing a car, but I didn't realize that entering the industry you are looked at as a weaker link because it's a male-dominated industry," Ward explained. "Instead of jumping into the transportation industry I had to crawl in because I didn't have a certain financial support that was needed."

Ward hopes the Accion Opportunity Fund Program sets a precedent for other financial institutions in ensuring equitable access to funding for entrepreneurs of color.


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Sunday is Mother's Day, and what moms may need most is a day off.

Research shows that inequities persist in the amount of time moms and dads spend on child care. In 2023, American mothers spent on average 167% more time on primary caregiving than fathers. And the Institute for Women's Policy Research says that costs a mom nearly $17,000 per year - and $450 billion nationwide - in "foregone" income.

Kate Bahn, the institute's chief economist and senior vice president for research, said the trend continues with "secondary child care," or supervising children while multitasking - mothers spend 133% more time doing so than fathers.

"That is not time you can go into an office. That is not time where you can be out of the house," she said. "And so, that is time where you also still can't work for earnings. Some mothers are really constrained by their disproportionate caregiving responsibility."

Data show that in Montana, mothers make 59% of what fathers make per year - a difference of nearly $25,000. The inequities are worse among Native American moms in the state, whose pay is about half the earnings of white fathers.

Bahn added that rural families may face extra barriers.

"If we're thinking about all the constraints that shape how women decide to engage in the labor market," she said, "it can be things like driving distance to a job, access to child-care services for your children."

A bill to help support child-care workers in Montana passed both chambers of the state Legislature and could get to the governor's desk. It would expand eligibility for the "Best Beginnings Child Care Scholarship Program" to include child care workers - who are some of the state's lowest-paid workers.


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Wildland firefighting is a tough job and the industry has long struggled with worker retention. Training boot camps have helped bring new firefighters, especially women, into the fold in recent years, but federal cuts could threaten progress.

About 84% of federal wildland firefighters are men, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Boot camps targeting women have been popular. Montana saw its first just last year.

Riva Duncan, vice president of the group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, worked in fire for more than three decades and said the boot camps offered a "safe environment" to raise concerns.

"Beyond the actual required training, just having discussions about, 'Well, how do you address hygiene? What do I do if I feel like I'm being treated unfairly?' And those kinds of questions that don't get covered in a classroom setting," Duncan explained.

Since the boot camps are designed to increase workforce diversity, future programs have been cut under the Trump administration's DEI rollbacks. Following the firing and then rehiring of 6,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture employees since February, including some with firefighting duties, the Interior Department announced permanent pay raises for wildland firefighters in the new federal appropriations budget.

The U.S. Forest Service has seen a 45% attrition rate of wildland firefights over the last three years. Duncan argued the DEI cuts will not help.

"We need people who want to do this work. We need the kind of people that value working on the public lands and serving the American taxpayers," Duncan emphasized. "This has detrimental effects to the overall recruitment and retention strategy to try and get firefighters into these jobs."

Fourteen different scheduled women's boot camps have been canceled. According to the USDA, about 65,000 wildfires burned nearly 9 million acres across the U.S. in 2024.


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March is Women's History Month and an Arkansas native has made history by being honored with a $1 coin from the U.S. Mint.

The late Raye Montague was an engineer with the U.S. Navy and created the first computer-generated rough draft of a U.S. naval ship in 1971. Because of her work, ships could be designed in 18 hours instead of two years.

David Montague, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Raye's son, said his family worked closely with the mint to create the coin's design.

"It was her with her hand over her heart, which is patriotic, and then looking over the ship that she designed, the Oliver Hazard Perry," Montague explained. "That struck me immediately. And then the background, underneath the ship is the sea, and then that is actually a computer grid."

He recalled when he was a child, he collected coins with his mother, so it is fitting she would receive the honor. She died in 2018.

Last year, the federal building where she worked, in Bethesda, Maryland, was renamed the Raye Montague Center for Maritime Technology. Her son pointed out although his mother faced obstacles, she created time to help others.

"She saw it as the natural course of her professional opportunities," Montague observed. "If she was able to gain opportunities to do things and grow as a human being, she wanted to make sure that she opened doors for other people and was trying to make the world a better place."

The coin was released earlier this year and Montague noted it is already being used to continue his mother's legacy. The currency was shared with kids in an Arkansas youth group.

"They used the coin to say you all are Arkansas youth and this person was an Arkansas youth, and look, they're on a dollar coin," Montague added. "If she can do great things, as long as you work hard and you push for opportunities, then you have options as well."


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