Over the last four decades, Lois Hollstedt has dedicated herself to improving the lives of women and children. Founding president of the YWCA of Kamloops, and later CEO of the YWCA in Vancouver, she played a leading role in the establishment of daycare centres, art programs, residences for single mothers as well as a home for battered women and their children. Other initiatives that she has championed include research on fetal alcohol syndrome and an employment program to help disadvantaged women move from social assistance to the workforce.