Each year to celebrate and equip young women from across NYC with leadership tools, the collective holds a Leadership Summit—a day-long conference open to any and all girls and gender-nonconforming youth in NYC. Traditionally 500+ youth have attended and our keynotes and speakers have included Michaela Angela Davis, Ester Lofgren, Miki Agrawal, Wendy Hilliard, Alison Desir, Nessa, Stacey Tisdale, Arva Rice, Kimberly Drew, Brittany Brathwaite, Sade Swift, and Keisha Dutes. The speakers have left an incredible impact on our youth and have been able to connect with them and inspire them to take on leadership roles in very powerful ways, unique to themselves, each year.
The Summit is a one-day conference created to give girls and gender non-conforming youth opportunities to increase knowledge of career fields and understanding of the college application process, along with increased motivation to do well in school to maximize their opportunities, increased feelings of self-efficacy, a new network of strong and supportive females. See the table below for titles and descriptions of all of the workshops that will be offered at this year’s Summit.
Students come away with increased knowledge of steps they can take to step into leadership positions, organize and make positive change in their neighborhoods and communities, increased motivation to do well in school to maximize their opportunities and new, and robust networks of strong and supportive girls and young women.
This year, special guests included Leah Daughtry and Yolanda Caraway—the authors of the best-selling book “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics”, which won the NAACP Image Awards 2019; Traci Copeland, a Nike Master Trainer; Halie Thomas, the Founder and CEO of the nonprofit Happy, who is also the youngest certified integrative nutrition health coach; and Matt Hunter, a famous Colombian-Italian-American singer, songwriter.
Students from across the 5 boroughs engaged in our fifth annual Summit, with 907 young participants registering for the event, and 525 in attendance. This was by far the largest audience we have had at Summit, and the participant feedback was just as reassuring:
“This was my first year coming here, so I didn’t know what to expect, but I had lots of fun today. Thank you!”
“We should have more of these. I had an amazing time!”
“It was great – Thank you!”
“I had so much fun, the Reach Higher workshop was amazing!”
“Keep doing what you’re doing, it was very uplifting.”
