The latest episode is with Jenny Rickard, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Common App, a not-for-profit membership organization committed to the pursuit of access, equity, and integrity in the college admission process. Each year, more than one million students, one-third of whom are first-generation, apply to college through Common App’s online application.

Ms. Rickard was a pleasure to interview, it was fun conversation with lots of great details about her personal journey coupled with great insights and advice for our listeners.

Ms. Rickard has shown a strong commitment to college access as evidenced by her accomplishments as the chief enrollment officer at both the University of Puget Sound and Bryn Mawr and in admission roles at Swarthmore and New York University School of Law. Her extensive service within the national higher education community includes a wide range of roles with the College Board, Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools (ACCIS), US Department of Education, and The Common Application Board of Directors — serving as Board President from 2007 to 2008.

Within the corporate field, Ms. Rickard was a vice president responsible for higher education product strategy at PeopleSoft. She was also a consultant for the higher education software company Datatel and started her career on Wall Street at J.P. Morgan & Co.

Since she joined Common App in August of 2016, the organization has developed a long-term strategic plan and roadmap and has expanded its access initiatives, including the acquisition of Reach Higher, the college access and success campaign founded by former First Lady Michelle Obama during her time in the White House, and the development of a new application system for transfer and adult students.

Ms. Rickard serves on the board of directors for the Posse Foundation and College Possible. She is an advisory board member for the National Education Equity Lab and Liaison GradCAS, a centralized application for graduation admission, and she currently sits on the American Council on Education’s Washington Higher Education Secretariat.

She received a doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania; a Master of Business Administration degree from New York University, Stern School of Business; and a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Swarthmore College.

This interview was extra special for Eli and Jordana due to the common connection of Swarthmore College. It was an fun interview for them, especially connecting on all things Swarthmore. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

A new episode with Dr. Wendy Horton, the Chief Executive Officer at UVA Health University Medical Center. Dr. Horton was a pleasure to speak with, it was fun interview with lots of great details about her background and career along with insights, perspectives, and advice for the future.

A super informative and interesting interview with Dr. Prathibha Varkey, the President of the Mayo Clinic Health System. Dr. Varkey leads over 17,000 employees serving 16 community hospitals and 50 multispecialty clinics across 39 communities in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Dr. Varkey is a Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science.

Dr. Jennifer Rexford is the Provost, Gordon Y. S. Wu Professor in Engineering, Professor of Computer Science, and formerly the Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University. She is an accomplished computer scientists whose research has focused on analysis of computer networks, and in particular network routing, performance measurement, and network management.  She is an affiliated faculty member in electrical and computer engineering, operations research and financial engineering, applied and computational mathematics, gender and sexuality studies, Center for Information Technology Policy, High Meadows Environmental Institute and Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering. 

We are very excited to share this new episode with feminist icon Gloria Steinem! Ms. Steinem is a writer, lecturer, political activist, and feminist organizer. She has spent decades traveling in this and other countries as an organizer and lecturer and is a frequent media spokeswoman on issues of equality. She is particularly interested in the shared origins of sex and race caste systems, gender roles and child abuse as roots of violence, non-violent conflict resolution, the cultures of indigenous peoples, and organizing across boundaries for peace and justice. She lives in New York City.

It was a very fun episode for Annika and Sofia, leading up to it there was excitement and disbelief from family members that they were going to interview Gloria Steinem! Ms. Steinem was a joy to speak with, her stories, insights and advice were so interesting to hear and her humbleness with regard to her place in feminism made us love her all the more. If you believe in feminism and women’s causes, this is a must listen episode! A huge thanks to Ms. Steinem from all the Girl Power Guru team!

Dr. Melina Kibbe, the Dean of the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine, is our latest guest for the podcast. She is an active, practicing vascular surgeon who has maintained an independently funded basic science/translational research laboratory since 2003. Her clinical practice is focused on the care of patients with vascular disease. As a surgeon-scientist, she has been performing independent research and mentoring trainees in the conduct of hypothesis-driven research. To date, she has mentored 41 postdoctoral fellows, 9 graduate students, 13 medical students, and 21 undergraduate students in research. She also has had significant experience with clinical research and clinical trials, having served as national PI or site PI of gene-and cell-based therapies for critical limb ischemia and peripheral artery disease.

She previously held the Colin G. Thomas Jr. Distinguished Professorship and Chair of the Department of Surgery at UNC School of Medicine. Kibbe is also the editor-in-chief for the journal JAMA Surgery, and past president for the Association for Academic Surgery, Midwestern Vascular Surgical Society, and the Association of VA Surgeons.

Eli and Sofia greatly enjoyed their conversation with Dr. Kibbe. She exhibited a strong energy of excitement and enthusiasm throughout the interview, which made for a great episode. We hope you enjoy listening to our conversation!

The latest interview is with Muffet McGraw, a Hall of Famer and one of the winningest coaches in college basketball history.  Mrs. McGraw coached women's basketball for 38 seasons, with 33 of them at the University of Notre Dame.  She is a two-time national champion head coach that amassed 936 career victories with a win percentage of 76 percent.  Her teams made nine trips to the Final Four and she collected consensus National Coach of the Year honors three times throughout her legendary career.

McGraw’s Irish squads accumulated 14 regular-season conference titles, including eight straight from 2012-19, 11 conference tournament championships (including six in her final eight years at Notre Dame) and made seven trips to the NCAA Division I Women’s National Championship game. Additionally, McGraw earned seven conference Coach of the Year honors across five leagues. McGraw coached 22 All-Americans and 20 future WNBA players, including No. 1 overall picks Jewell Loyd and Jackie Young.

McGraw was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017, following her induction in both the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame (2011) and the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame (2014). She is also a member of St. Joseph’s University Women’s Basketball and the Philadelphia Big Five Halls of Fame.

Eli and Katelyn had a great conversation with Coach McGraw, which we think you will enjoy!

Happy Boston Marathon day! We are excited to share our interview with Kathrine Switzer, an iconic athlete, author, Emmy-award winning broadcaster and advocate for sports and social causes, Ms. Switzer was the first woman to officially register and run the Boston Marathon in 1967. She was attacked in the race by an angry official who tried to rip off her bib number (#261) and throw her out of the race because she was a woman. She finished the 26.2 mile distance anyway and went on win the 1974 New York City Marathon and to champion women in the sport globally, most notably leading the drive to make the women's marathon an official Olympic event in 1984. Now, 58% of all runners in the USA are women. To celebrate this social revolution,  and to support another on active aging, Switzer ran the Boston Marathon again, at age 70, on the 50th anniversary of her iconic run, finishing only 24 minutes slower than she did when she was 20.  This run launched her non-profit '261 Fearless' --named after that famous bib number--which empowers women globally though running. She has been honored widely for her achievements including being inducted into the USA National Women’s Hall of Fame which recognized her for creating positive social change throughout her storied career.

In today's episode, we are interviewing Gwen Young, the CEO of Women Business Collaborative (WBC).  Ms. Young is also a Visiting Scholar at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University.  She has had an amazing career, formerly serving as the Director of the Global Women's Leadership Initiative at the Wilson Center.  Prior to that she worked at some amazing international organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Medecins Sans Frontieres, the International Rescue Committee, and the Harvard Institute for International Development.  She is our first CEO guest and we were very excited to learn about her work at WBC and about her career. Please take a few minutes to listen to this episode, her stories and her words of wisdom make this a can't miss episode!