When dreaming my sophomore year of the female empowerment work I wanted to do here on campus, I never imagined what that journey would entail. Almost a year later, it is still hard to believe that it happened to me. Meeting Alexis Jones last fall on campus, one of my top role models, was a dream come true enough, and when she asked me to maintain an I AM THAT GIRL Foundation presence here on campus, I was honored. I thought that was not quite the end of the road for this adventure, but I did not see what could top meeting Alexis and launching our chapter. I was soon proven wrong.
Since October I have kept in touch with Alexis, and have been introduced to other IATG Foundation staff in order to build a chapter at Tabor. Things with the chapter were going well and I was satisfied with the changes I was seeing everyday at school. I never dreamt of anything more until I was contacted by Emily Greener, the other co-founder of IATG, who invited me to New York. The week before Emily Greener had won the DVF
People’s Voice Award, an award given by designer, Diane Von Furstenberg, and voted on by the public to award a woman who is actively making change for the female community. I was already so proud of Emily, and honored to be part of the organization given this award; and to top it off Emily Greener had called me to give me her one extra ticket to the award show!
As a girl from New Bedford who has only known the Southcoast of Massachusetts, and who is basing her entire college process on the New York dream, this was unbelievable. This call was the last thing I was expecting on a Thursday night, and truly felt unreal until a week later when I was on a train and then finally in Manhattan for the first time ever in my life. IATG had changed my life before, but this was on another level.
IATG has given the opportunity for this New Bedford girl to indulge in the best parts of New York along side some of the most incredible activist and females out there. My gratitude for everything this organization has given me from a confidence boost to the chance to explore New York will never be fully expressed. As I sit here on another train back to Tabor from the Tribeca Film Festival, thanks again to IATG, I wonder anew what the future will hold for me.
