Garima Singh is an 11th grader at Westwood High School who volunteers for GENaustin. Thanks for sharing about your experience, Garima!
I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Texas Conference for Women this year. The day began with some excellent speakers, including Debbie Sterling, Sheryl Wudunn, and Shiza Shahid. The lunch keynote speakers were also wonderful and very inspirational women: Soledad O’Brian, Tamara Mellon, and Diana Nyad. Diana Nyad’s speech and story were especially remarkable and she was given a well-deserved standing ovation. After breakfast, I went to the sessions planned for all people in the Young Women’s Program.
The first session was called Turning Your Dream Into Reality. The panel was led by Jessica Bacal who conducted the session and posed questions to the panel. The panel itself was Kimberly Bryant, the founder of Black Girls Code, Megan Grassell, the founder of YellowBerry, and Alison Brushaber, one of the co-founders of Hail Merry. All of these women had a dream that they managed to make a reality through nothing less than very hard work. This was what most of the panel focused on: no dream is too big as long you have the will and grit to see it come to life. At the end, we got a change to ask questions to the panelists. Having started a Girls Who Code Club at my high school, I asked Kimberly Bryant how to get high school girls interested in coming to a Girls Who Code Club. She gave me some extremely useful advice, saying that for girls that my age, there needs to be some sort of extra motivator. She said to have some sort of social event that showed them they would be solving human problems with other humans and not just typing on a computer.
The next session through the Young Women’s Program was a speaker. Her name is Alexis Jones and she founded I AM THAT GIRL, which helps girls be the best version of themselves. (GENaustin’s 2009 Conference Keynote speaker!) She talked about her own life, growing up poor, attending a “rich kid” school, and realizing that life was about much more than appearing perfect to the world. Her speech is one of the best I’ve heard in my life. I love public speaking, mostly because I love to talk about my passions to people. However, Alexis wasn’t speaking to a crowd; she was having a conversation with human beings. Her funny and insightful personality shone through her speech, because she talked to us, instead of talking at us. This made her message of empowerment all the more powerful, because she made us feel like we were the most important people in the world by talking so sincerely to us. It really made me believe in her purpose to empower girls with the confidence they need to be who they want to be.
I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend the Texas Conference for Women. It was an incredible experience and very inspirational. I hope to attend again soon!