Naomi Porter is a 16-year-old serial entrepreneur, education reform advocate and public speaker from Los Angeles, California.  She is the C.E.O. of two businesses:  Spice it Up and Bright Futures. Naomi is a 2020 Gold Award Girl Scout for launching EntrepreYOUership - a  project that widens youth access to entrepreneurial education. “You can do it too” is the tag line to encourage youth to see themselves as  entrepreneurs who can create a product or service, even when they are young.  Her team has provided entrepreneurial education to 250+ youth through 25+ virtual workshops. She is also a Global Research and Design Intern for Girl Scouts of the USA through which she has lead national focus groups, hosted a TV show, and provided relevant content for youth.  

Hailey Rodgers is an author, blogger, podcaster, and an aspiring life coach and entrepreneur. She published her first book, See Me: Becoming Your Authentic Self, in 2019. See Me is a self-help book geared towards young adults and it aims to inspire readers to live an authentic life. She is excited to publish my second book in December 2021. Furthermore, she launched her podcast, See Me Show, in 2020 which promotes the same message. She is also the current Co-President of a charity called Step Above Stigma (SAS). Their goal is to improve the accessibility of mental health care across Canada. Through all of their fundraisers, 100% of the profits will go to mental health organizations across Canada. Through their fundraisers, sock sales, and other events and initiatives, they work towards educating the public on the importance of mental wellness while donating money to mental health charities. She is also in her fourth year of commerce at Queen’s University, and when she graduates, she will be doing a summer start-up incubator program where she will be launching a business and is also working toward her life coaching certification. 

Listen to our discussion on living authentically, advocating for mental health awareness, and productivity. Hear all about Hailey's journey, from leading a charity, to writing a book, to hosting a podcast--she's done it all!

Kaitlyn is the founder of Supporting Smiles, which is a mental health based organization based around the awareness and education of mental health and its surrounding topics. Her reason for starting her organization came from her own mental health journey and narcissistic/emotional abuse. Her father abused her mentally and emotionally for a couple of years and after almost 2 years, she got the courage to leave and not stay with him again. After she left, she spent a year trying to find herself and grow herself mentally until about a year later when he started contacting her. From April-June 2020, he was contacting her and things were going downhill, until her mother started to notice, leading her to go back to counseling.

In late June, she came up with the idea of her organization and ran it past her counselor and she loved it! Her organization helped her cope while researching and educating on different aspects of mental health. That brings her to now, where she is still venturing through her personal growth journey and loves her organization, team, and the projects they are working on, and she is still completely surprised about how much they grew in little time.

In today's episode, we cover different, heavier types of topics, focusing on abuse, the stigma around therapy and mental health, and how Kaitlyn managed to use Supporting Smiles as a way to overcome these struggles.

Currently a student at the University of California, Irvine, Bethany is a political science and music double major. Bethany recently ran for Irvine Unified School District Board of Education in  the 2020 general elections, making her the youngest candidate to ever  run for that position. She also started playing the piano at the age of  6, and recently appeared on the 2020 Graduate Together Show, hosted by Lebron James and featuring appearances from President Barack Obama. She  has also been featured on news networks such as CBS and KCAL-9. Bethany performed as an exhibitor guest for the Pearl River Piano Group at the National Association of Music Merchants Show, and  was named an Orange  County Register Artist of the Year semifinalist. 

Hear us talk about mental health struggles throughout high school, along with the stress of college applications and being a young leader. Listen to how Bethany's passion for music, in addition to her incredible persistence and determination, helped her through the challenges she faced.

Naama Barnea-Goraly M.D. received her medical degree from the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical School in  Jerusalem, Israel, and her clinical training in Child and Adolescent  Psychiatry as well as a post-doctoral neuroimaging research fellowship  at Stanford University. She then went on to work as an Instructor and  brain researcher at Stanford. Her research, on brain structure in  disorders affecting social cognition, was published extensively in  leading psychiatric and neuroscience journals, and presented in  international conferences.

This episode, we're talking with Dr. Naama Barnea-Goraly, a current psychiatrist, a former researcher and mentor at Stanford University, and a co-founder of Girltelligence. Listen to us discuss the importance and wonders of research, along with the gender inequities throughout the world. Hear Dr. Naama talk about her personal experience and challenges with being a woman in STEM, along with her journey in building a community for girls through Girltelligence. 

Shailee Sankhala is the founder and president of Crossroads Initiative. Stemming from her passion for  storytelling and mental health advocacy, she created Crossroads as a way  to give teenagers the opportunity of self expression. Through this  organization, she hopes to decrease the mental health stigma by  appreciating the unnoticed mental struggles that people face in their lives. Outside of Crossroads Initiative, she is also a  filmmaker in her school’s broadcast, where she continues to pursue her  love for storytelling. Join Shailee and Allene's conversation about the struggles of mental health among high school students in a competitive atmosphere, and hear us tackle the topic of prioritizing mental health over academics or extracurriculars. Listen to how Shailee founded Crossroads Initiative and how she's been using the power of storytelling to spread mental health awareness everywhere.

Chahak Pahwa is the founder and president of  GirlSTEMpowered- an international youth organization that aims to  encourage interest in STEM amongst high school girls. Since the inception of the organization, she has built a team of over 70  enthusiastic girls from 5 countries across the globe. As of now, GirlSTEMpowered has curated content on several modern STEM concepts,  from neuroplasticity to dark matter, in ways that appeal to the  interests of young girls, organized webinars that allow girls to network  with women pursuing college degrees and careers in STEM, and recognized  female scientists and entrepreneurs that have shattered glass ceilings  in their fields! Besides her passion for empowering girls to pursue STEM, she is an avid writer. She was awarded the Hindustan Times Scholarship in 2016 and was recognized as one of the brightest young minds in the city. 

In today's episode, host Allene Yue interviews Chahak Pahwa, the founder of GirlSTEMpowered, all the way from India. Hear us discuss imposter syndrome faced by women everywhere, along with the importance of building community and combining STEM with various other fields. Learn about Chahak's story in founding her organization, her interest in the life sciences, and find out what she has planned for the future!

Jackie Bueno is the proud daughter of immigrant parents from Nicaragua and the Philippines. Jackie is a Cal graduate and the Founder of Empower to Change (e2c). Jackie's love of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) led her to  initially started her professional career working in digital politics  after graduating from Cal. Jackie first worked at a Democratic Super PAC, then worked in Congress for a first-term  Congressman from Chicago. Through this experience, Jackie switched her career to tech to become more well-rounded as a young  professional and pursue her interests in the intersection of politics  and tech. Jackie currently works in tech sales covering government accounts in her territory. Jackie's aim is to address issues of DEI in the tech space when she's not running e2c. In today's episode, host Allene Yue interviews Jackie Bueno about her experiences in the political and technological world at an early age. Listen to Jackie talk about her journey, graduating from UC Berkeley, moving to Washington D.C., and then moving back to California, and hear about how her incredible experiences and fascinating jobs led her to found Empower to Change.