alumni

Girls For A Change alumni are making their mark as influential leaders and social change agents. Our 5,000+ GFC alumni have won notable awards,been appointed to powerful leadership positions and have achieved outstanding accomplishments since completing our program.

They are:
Professional Business Women of California scholarship award winners. Bank of America Youth community leader award recipients. GFC National Board members. The recipients of $50,000+ in scholarships for college in alignment with their participation on GFC. Political interns. Business interns. Youth Creating Change award recipients. Non-profit founders. Global Girl Action Team founders. Stanford summer political training students. Camp Start Up full scholarship recipients. NBC 11 community relations department interns. USAID workers. Latina Peace Officers Association award recipients. Young women activist group founder on a college campus. North Western Journalism Association interns. NASA interns. Youth Service Award winners. Northern California Youth Grant Makers Association members. Nonviolence activists who've worked with the Chavez, Gandhi and King families as part of the annual Carry the Vision conference...

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We want to hear how you're changing the world--email us or COMMENT below!

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I can honestly say being involved with Girls For A Change (GFC) changed my entire perspective on my life and the world at large. I had the pleasure of being a member of the Girl Steering Committee in Phoenix from my sophomore year in high school (2005) until I graduated (2008). Working alongside the other members of the Girl Steering Committee, the Phoenix staff, and board members made for a truly inspiring experience. Prior to being on the Girl Steering Committee I focused on community service.  I still think community service has an important role to play in fixing our world, but GFC also challenged me to be a change agent—to be someone who breaks the cycles which are holding us back. 

Currently in my sophomore year at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, I’m creating my own major in social change. I hope to study past movements as well as current issues so that I can contribute to solving the many issues we’re facing. My major is directly inspired by what I learned and felt at GFC. I am formally studying these topics, and am also active on committees which examine campus culture and are chartered by our student government, am a member of Duke’s NOW chapter, regularly engage with the Duke Women’s Center and Center for LGBT Life. I am also initiating reform among the Jewish community.  In February of 2010 I brought Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a GFC Phoenix Board Member, to Duke to meet with a number of student groups. Though I’ll graduate in two years, it is a life-long goal of mine to be an agent for positive change in the communities—geographically based and sociologically based—of which I am a member. A life-long athlete and sports enthusiast, I once envisioned myself having a career in a sports league or organization. Now, however, I hope to pursue a Ph.D. to study the ways that sport can be used for positive social change, community development and outreach—a philosophy which combines two of my greatest passions and for which I credit GFC. Lastly, the women with whom I formed relationships as a member of the Girl Steering Committee continue to serve as role models for me.  I am frequently in touch with them and our relationships have only grown now that I am older. They continue to inspire me, support me and challenge me in all that I do. My nuanced perspective on change, the idea for my major and future academic work and the relationships I formed are only a few of the ways that GFC played a truly pivotal role in my life and continues to influence me.

Sejal Hathi, a Girl Steering Committee member and a GFC National Board member, was featured on CNN's Young People Who Rock! This is an award interview program that recognizes young people under the age of 30 who are doing amazing community work.

In the CNN piece, Sejal discusses GFC as her inspiration for her social change work throughout the world. Watch her interview here!

Sejal founded Girls Helping Girls when she was 15. The organization is an international nonprofit that empowers all girls to transform their world by mobilizing them to engage in cultural exchange, gain a global education, and create and lead social change. One of the GHG initiatives is Sisters 4 Peace, a social-change movement dedicated to building a new generation of girl change makers.

This summer, Sejal brought GFC programming to India with Helping Girls. See our post on her work here.

Truly, it was through GFC that I developed my confidence, ability to speak and pitch an idea before large crowds, and was given the chance to really flourish and express not only my visions for social change, but my goals and ideas to anyone and everyone. They are truly a wonderful gifts to posses and I can categorically credit my coaches, Kim and Lisa, as well as Niko, Whitney, Patty, and Carrie for supporting me in making that happen. I'd like to let them know what a difference they made in my life. Thanks so much from the bottom of my heart.

I've recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in International Political Economy, and am looking forward to impacting the world with my education and GFC experience in a BIG way!

Girls For A Change has helped me grow as a young woman and gave me the confidence and pride I carry on today.  After being urged by my guidance counselor and my best friends in high school, I joined GFC in 2003. Even though I wasn’t sure at first about joining, I went on to be a co-leader of my Girl Action Team, as well as a member of the 2004-2005 Silicon Valley Girl Steering Committee. I’ll be a senior in college this coming fall at Syracuse University, and I have to say my activities in college have been shaped by the things GFC taught me.

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I was on the inaugural GFC Girl Steering Committee for the launch of the first GFC Girl Summit in the Bay Area.  GFC helped introduce me to top Bay Area executives and gave me the opportunity to learn about building a new organization from the ground up.  Under strong mentorship, I was able to polish my public speaking skills and learn how to effectively advocate for a social cause.  After a year on the Steering Committee, I graduated with honors from Notre Dame High School and landed a four-year scholarship to UCLA as the NBC11 Emma Bowen Foundation fellow.  Every summer, I rotated through different departments of NBC11, learning how to run a news station. 

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I was a sophomore in high school when I joined Girls For A Change in 2002. With my Milpitas High School team and the support and guidance of our amazing coaches, Joan and Lorraine, my team hosted a day long self esteem summit for middle school girls. Today as a GFC alum I continue to attend GFC events, including the Silicon Valley Girl Summits. I believe every young girl deserves a chance to be part of the GFC experience because I know they will LOVE it as much as I did. I hope that one day I can give back to GFC by becoming a coach and help inspire other young girls to chase their dreams.
I am a senior at San Jose State University majoring in Hospitality Management and I’ll be graduating in May 2009. My goal is to pursue a career in event planning. With the help of my GFC coaches, I earned an internship at National Semiconductor as their Events Intern.

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At a young age, I often felt like a powerless spectator. The possibility of fulfilling my desires to change my surroundings appeared impossible living in a country ravaged by poverty. So, when I first came to the United States, I was overwhelmingly surprised of the endless opportunities there were for young people to be civically engaged and to be involved in public service. At the age of 13, I quickly learned about the idea of social change and civic engagement by joining with Girls For A Change (GFC) in Silicon Valley.

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Before GFC, I was missing school a lot. I’m from a family of nine and I’m like the good one. I thought I could get away with it and nobody really checked. I think I was being plain young and not thinking. I wasn’t finding anything there for me. And then my GPA was real low. I’m from Burundi in Africa and my parents are from the two tribes that were fighting. So coming from there to here and acting all Americanized was hard. My family has been through hell, I’ve seen war and I’ve been through it. I was so closed off and I wouldn’t talk to nobody about nothing. Growing up in Africa and living in the refugee camp and not having food—it was a struggle. Still coming here, I realized, "I’m still messing up." I felt like I had no reason to go to school, I wasn’t motivated.

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Before GFC I was shy and I didn’t have much self-confidence, I always hid in the corner. I thought everyone was smarter than me. After the first three weeks of GFC I started coming out of my little shell and participating in class more and everyone noticed. Now I’m the first person to raise my hand to go in front of the class to give a speech. In GFC they made me realize that everyone is equal and no one is better than anyone else.

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