Launching a nonprofit to empower girls to become leaders of social change through design thinking

In 2015, I teamed up with three amazing colleagues at the Stanford d.school and co-founded Girl Possible—a 501(c)3 non-profit empowering girls to become the leaders and change-makers of tomorrow. Together we’ve developed and launched products, programs, and experiences that have reached thousands of girls globally. Fast Company, Lean In, Ms. Magazine, Gentry, and Women of Silicon Valley have featured our work.

Our journey first began with a cross-country, RV road-trip.

During the summer of 2015, we spent 14 weeks driving across the US in an RV, teaching 55 design thinking & leadership workshops for 1500 girls across 32 states. Between Seattle, New York City, Washington DC, Dallas, and dozens of cities in-between, we were lucky to partner directly with schools, Girl Scout troops, and educators to bring our curriculum to girls. We taught workshops in gymnasiums, children’s museums, maker-spaces, and more.

Raising $35,000 on Kickstarter made this journey possible.

Launching a Kickstarter campaign covered costs so that we could coach all of our workshops for free. It also opened the doors for us to build partnerships with 55 diverse organizations, schools, and communities across 32 states so that we could deliver our curriculum to as many girls as possible. We exceeded our fundraising goal with support from 500+ donors and several corporate sponsors (SAP, 3M, Post-It). Our campaign was honored as a Kickstarter Project of the Day and mentioned in a New York Times video feature on design. I produced our campaign video in Final Cut Pro.

We recently ran our first summer program.

50 middle-school girls joined our superhero-themed summer camp, Camp Girl Possible, hosted at Stanford University in August 2018.