Girl Entrepreneur #001
Name: Allison Poss
Location: Nebraska, USA
Business Name: Girls With Ideas, Inc
Research shows that although 60% of women aspire to become leaders in their industries, shockingly the same percentage struggle to see themselves as leaders. Working as a school psychologist, Dr. Allison Poss was alarmed at this statistic and saw that women’s confidence issues stemmed from their educational experiences as young girls. Taking her experience in schools and her entrepreneurial spirit, Allison and her friends Britney Tracy and Angie Magazino established “Girls With Ideas” in the hopes of inspiring future girl leaders through a girl leadership group and fun curriculum.
Their aim in setting up “Girls With Ideas” was to intervene in girls’ education at the critical stage of development (around 9-13 years old). They believe that “women who were encouraged to be leaders growing up are more likely to aspire to senior leadership roles in their careers” and so developed a programme that teaches girls essential life skills and encourages them to think of themselves as leaders. Their main mission is to combat young girls’ insecurity and make them see that they can manage and lead just as well as boys.
As well as developing and providing this amazing leadership curriculum to schools and other institutions, Allison, Britney and Angie provide lectures and workshops to reach as many young girls as possible. Although they recognise that in order to re-align the gender disparity in leadership roles, they must reach girls all across the world, they absolutely refuse to stop until they’ve empowered as many girls as possible.
The three amazing entrepreneurs are constantly fundraising in order to spread their message of confidence and empowerment, selling fun t-shirts and notebooks alongside their lesson bundles. Additionally, a 2016 Kickstarter campaign saw them raise over $20,000. This sum allowed them to further develop their programme and increase their global presence: they now have influence in 15 states and 4 countries!
Alongside their educational programme, Girls With Ideas are building corporate partnerships, working with companies to close the gender leadership gap. This is undoubtedly an important step to putting an end to gender disparity in the world’s biggest corporations and businesses. The result of Girls With Ideas will hopefully be that more women apply for leadership roles and more businesses consider women for these jobs. This would be an incredible outcome and immense achievement.
Allison is hopeful for the future and sees that one-day Girls With Ideas could become ‘Kids With Ideas’. But this will only happen when, and only when, boys and girls have equal representation in leadership roles.
-Phoebe Cawley
Junior Girl
Girl Museum Inc.