Carol Brown Wise, b. 1929

Carol Brown Wise is known in New Orleans as the woman who made men take working women seriously. Moving to New Orleans from Chicago after her marriage in the 1950s, Wise started her own Real Estate business and pushed for Jewish and secular organizations to accommodate the lives of working women. She began a professional woman’s division within the Jewish Federation. She also helped unify the men’s and women’s divisions of the Federation and served as an executive committee member and president of this unified body. As a member of the Chamber of Commerce, she put forward women leaders. As a board member of the United Way, she advocated for professional standards in childcare and helped rebuild the childcare network post-Katrina. Seeing that Jewish stories were seldom included in Katrina reporting she pushed the Jewish Women’s Archive to collect the stories and memorabilia of the Jewish community from Biloxi to Baton Rouge.