About Us

WHAT IS SHEHEROES?

Mission

SheHeroes empowers young girls of all backgrounds to dream big, explore their interests, and ignite their passion for any career they might pursue. Through our online content and video profiles, girls imagine their own potential by engaging with influential stories of exceptional, successful women role models across all fields. Like Sally Ride, we believe: “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it!”

Videos and Discussion Guides

SheHeroes’ videos profile women role models across diverse professions who are celebrated as powerful leaders for their successes, character and contributions. Each video comes with an age-appropriate discussion guide. The guides are used to enhance and support school and enrichment program curriculum with innovative, relevant content.

Impact and Progress

SheHeroes’ content reaches thousands of young girls – online, in classrooms, and through after-school programs. We produce videos that run an average of 5 minutes each and they have directly reached hundreds of thousands of girls online. A test group of 90 4th graders felt being a CEO was a man’s job; after viewing SheHeroes’ videos the majority of students felt all careers were for both boys and girls. After viewing our videos, girls tell us they are inspired and roused to explore their future possibilities and potential. In addition to our SheHero video profiles, our Meet Your SheHero videos and events allow girls to interact directly with role models to learn more about their careers in an informal, conversational setting.

A powerful consequence of our outreach is our effect on young boys. The global issue of gender inequality cannot be solved by empowering girls and women alone; young boys and men are a crucial part of the equation. SheHeroes encourages parents and educators to share our videos with young boys to broaden their minds on this important issue.

Why SheHeroes?

Girls face many obstacles that can negatively affect their long-term success. Amongst these, studies show that a lack of positive female role models—in life and in the media—negatively impact the health, self-esteem, and future career choices of girls. For example:

Career development begins in childhood, but children still often limit their career goals to out-dated stereotyped professions based on gender.

Thirty-five percent of girls feel they lack positive role models; 90% feel there is nothing being done to promote positive role models for or to them; 92% think having good role models is important.

In G-rated movies, main females characters are usually pursuing a romance and “royalty” is the most common female occupation.

Diverse role models, of all shapes and sizes, who are valued for their accomplishments, and not their appearance, positively impact self-esteem and body image in girls.

SheHeroes is a tax exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.

Our Team

Lori Nelson,

Executive Director

Lori’s background is an unusual combination of nonprofit management and entertainment. A graduate of UCLA, she began her career in the Los Angeles film industry, then traveled the world as a magazine journalist.

Her travels brought her to New York, where for 10 years she served as the Executive Director of the Shakespeare Globe Centre. The international organization recreated Shakespeare’s original theater in London. She later served for several years as Executive Director of the Birmingham Pledge Foundation, a grassroots effort to end racism. One of the first women admitted to the Explorers Club, she has been very active in supporting women in exploration and science and is currently Co-Chair of the West Coast Chapter.

Lori’s background in media led her to form her own production company, N Vision Productions. The company has developed and produced non-fiction TV series for most of the cable networks, while also running marketing campaigns for diverse media clients.

Sophia Yen, MD MPH,

Co-Founder

Sophia Yen is a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine. Along with two MIT alumnae (Sue Nagle and Cynthia Closkey) Sophia co-founded Sheheroes. She received her BS from MIT, and her medical degree from UCSF. She also received her masters in public health in maternal and child health from UC Berkeley. Passionate about family planning, Sophia is a reproductive rights advocate and has served on the executive board at the Center for Reproductive Rights and is the founder of the Silver Ribbon Campaign to Trust Women. Sophia also works in at Stanford in the Department of Pediatrics as a clinical instructor.

Amanda Guo,

Treasurer

Amanda is a CPA and she works with a local CPA firm, Weber and Company, Inc. in San Jose. She has more than eight years experiences in tax services for privately held business, technology companies, individual, partnership, estate and trusts. She also has experiences in audit and accounting services for both privately held companies and non-profit organizations. She received her MBA from Concordia University in Canada. She also had her BS in Economics from China.

Dr. Michelle Kraus,

Board Chair

Dr. Michelle Kraus is a veteran of the political blogging community writing on regulatory and political issues concerning the economy, environment, social change, innovation and technology. She pioneered the earliest social network and platform for politics, and is often referred to as a “Ninja” working behind the scenes to build communities, craft messaging and reach out to activists with new and innovative technologies. Covering the Clinton Global Initiative in 2007, Dr. Michelle started the “quiet voices” series illuminating the monumental work of many of the participants across the globe who are quietly affecting change in health care and poverty alleviation. Invited to help with the grassroots outreach for the Dali Lama and the human rights community, she has covered the initiatives at www.humanitariandream.com.

She holds a doctorate from Carnegie-Mellon University, a MA from the University of Michigan and a BA from Rutgers University (Douglass College). Michelle was the curator of all things Allen Ginsberg, has published two books, and written for many news outlets and publications. She speaks nationally on politics, technology and innovation.

Julie Allen,

Board

Julie Allen has three decades of experience in the education and non-profit fields. From her first position as an artist-in-residence in a high poverty school, Julie’s career has been driven by a passion for increasing access and opportunity for underrepresented students.

This passion led to leadership positions across the K-16 continuum including roles as Director of Education, Denver Community Schools, and of the Midwest Consortium for Service Learning In Higher Education.

Julie joined Boys Hope Girls Hope - serving as its Chief Academic and Vice President. There, she created a college access program recognized as one of the best in the nation by the Educational Policy Institute.

Recently Julie founded Lead Up, a “think and do tank” to explore community-based models to prepare students for the workforce of the future. She consults with NGOs across the country and writes and speaks about helping young people reach their potential. Julie graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University and earned her Master’s degree from the University of Denver.

Meghan Harvey,

Social Media Expert

Meghan Harvey is a new media expert and writer. She has worked with WomenCount and Momcrats. She also does new media and online community management for local small businesses as well as for a congressional campaign in a 2009 special election. She is also a weekly columnist for the online magazine, Politics Unlocked and has her own blog, Meg’s Idle Chatter You can find Meghan on Twitter at @meghan1018.