Because I Was a Girl Read online

  ABBY FALIK is the founder and CEO of Global Citizen Year and an award-winning social entrepreneur. Despite the many years she spent getting formal degrees (including a BA and MA from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard), her most formative learning happened far from any traditional classroom. While working with street children in Brazil, supporting community-development projects in Nicaragua, and tutoring recent immigrants in the United States, Abby developed the belief that fuels her life’s work: Talent is universal, but opportunity is not. Abby lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two young sons, Rio and Luca. She is eternally grateful to her mentors and role models—from Wendy Kopp to Jacqueline Novogratz to Michelle Obama—who help unleash her potential, so that she can help others do the same. Learn more at GlobalCitizenYear.org.

  JENA FRIEDMAN is a comedian and filmmaker. She has worked as a correspondent for National Geographic Explorer and Vice and as a field producer at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and has written for Late Show with David Letterman and The New Yorker. She has appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, @Midnight with Chris Hardwick, and The Jim Gaffigan Show and is currently developing a TV project with Adult Swim. Her role models include Dorothy Parker, Elaine May, Ava DuVernay, Samantha Bee, and Jon Stewart.

  JOAN HANAWI started her career in the Amazon rain forest through her work with the German International Development Cooperation and the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment. Her global experience is supplemented by joint BA degrees in international development and geography/environmental studies from UCLA. Joan is a Global Citizen Year fellow, US Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies grant recipient, UCLA achievement scholar, UCLA Global Citizens fellow, inaugural UCLA Geospatial fellow, Clinton Global Initiative LEAD fellow, and TEDxUCLA speaker. Her role models include Johanna Hanawi, Janice Hanawi, Abby Falik, Grace Kim, Katherine Zeng, Shannah Metz, G. Jennifer Wilson, Janina Montero, Malala Yousafzai, Michelle Obama, and Rupi Kaur.

  JANE HAWLEY is a writer and educator from San Luis Obispo, California. She earned her BA from the University of Wyoming and MFA from Texas State University and has worked more than a few odd jobs along the way—including a yearlong stint as an octopus packager in a landlocked state. Her fiction, nonfiction, and graphic narratives have most recently been published by The Pinch, Memoir Journal, and Day One. She likes spy movies, other people’s pets, national parks, and The Velvet Underground.

  TINA HAY comes from a diverse background encompassing film, technology, and finance. She is the founder of Napkin Finance (www.napkinfinance.com), a visual guide to money and finance. Napkin Finance has been featured in Business Insider, Yahoo Finance, E! Entertainment, and Forbes, among other publications, and has partnered with Michelle Obama’s education initiative, Better Make Room. Before Napkin Finance, she was cofounder of CityTripping.com and editor of CityTripping Los Angeles: Your Guide to Restaurants, Nightlife, Shopping, Culture, Fitness and Hotels. Additionally, Tina created and runs the environmental-conservation group All You Need Is One. She holds a BA from UCLA and an MBA from Harvard University.

  JODY HOUSER earned her MFA in creative writing at Emerson College in Boston before beginning to experiment with webcomics. She is the creator behind the webcomic Cupcake POW!, which launched in 2010 and is currently available on comiXology Submit. Jody has written Faith for Valiant Comics, Max Ride: Ultimate Flight and Agent May for Marvel, and Orphan Black for IDW. She has been a contributing writer to numerous comic anthologies, including Avengers: No More Bullying, Vertigo CMYK: Magenta, and both Womanthology series.

  A legendary civil rights and labor leader, DOLORES HUERTA has dedicated her life to advocating for the voiceless. Raised by her feminist, businesswoman mother in a farmworker community in Stockton, California, Dolores was inspired by her mother’s compassion and community service. After graduating from the University of Pacific’s Delta College, Dolores found her calling as an organizer while serving in the leadership of the Stockton Community Services Organization. In 1962, she cofounded with Cesar Chavez the National Farm Workers Association. Now in her eighties, she continues to work tirelessly developing leaders and advocating for the working poor, women, and children through her own foundation. For her work, she has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights, nine honorary doctorates from universities throughout the United States, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among others.

  ZAREEN JAFFERY is an executive editor at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers and Salaam Reads, where she works with a number of New York Times–bestselling and critically acclaimed authors. In 2016, along with publisher Justin Chanda, she cocreated Salaam Reads, an imprint that focuses on publishing books about Muslim children and families. Before Simon & Schuster, Zareen worked at HarperCollins Children’s Books and Hyperion Books. Zareen is a graduate of New York University. Her personal heroes include Khadija bint Khuwaylid (peace be upon her), Ida B. Wells, Malala Yousafzai, and Michelle Obama.

  ANJANETTE JOHNSTON is a staff scientist within the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She grew up in Millville, Pennsylvania, where she graduated from high school as valedictorian. She graduated from Juniata College with a bachelor of science in biology and went on to earn her PhD in biology from the University of Virginia. Since 2001, she has been a staff scientist curating sequence records submitted to GenBank, a public database of nucleotide and protein sequences used by the international scientific community. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two sons, who keep her busy as a soccer mom, basketball coach, and video game administrator.

  MATTIE JOHNSTON is a student in Los Angeles. She enjoys drawing, reading, skiing, and playing Clash Royale on her iPad. She has a dog named Mimi and had a fish named Summer, who sadly passed away.

  HOLLY KNIGHT has had a wild forty-year ride in the music business, which started with her own band Spider in 1982. After the release of two records, she moved on and began writing hits for or with other recording artists, such as Tina Turner (“Better Be Good to Me,” “The Best”), Pat Benatar (“Love Is a Battlefield,” “Invincible”), Aerosmith (“Ragdoll”), Rod Stewart (“Love Touch”), Heart (“Never”), and many more. Her songwriting has earned her numerous awards, including three Grammys and thirteen ASCAP songwriter awards. In June 2013, the songstress was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. www.hollyknight.com

  JILL LORIE is a private banker in the Wells Fargo mortgage banking division. Before joining Wells Fargo, she worked at JPMorgan Chase. Jill has been involved in many large-scale financing projects, including exclusive joint ventures with the MGM in Las Vegas and the W Hotel in Hollywood. She is consistently ranked in the top 10 percent of her company and has one of the highest customer-retention rates in the country. Before banking, Jill worked as an entertainment executive for MGM, Dino De Laurentiis, and Lookout Management. Jill lives outside Los Angeles with her husband, who is the CEO and founder of Vetz Investments, and two children.

  ZOEY LUNA (she/her/hers) is a high school student and activist for transgender youth. She was the youngest cast member on Laverne Cox’s Emmy Award–winning The T Word and was the subject of the documentary film Raising Zoey, directed by Dante Alencastre. She believes that living out loud, visibly, and authentically will empower other youth to do the same. Although she never thought she would become an activist for transgender youth in her community, she has welcomed it with great pride. She lives with her unwaveringly supportive family in California.

  TRISH MCEVOY is the independent founder of internationally renowned Trish McEvoy Beauty. A visionary makeup artist, innovator, entrepreneur, and author, Trish founded her company in 1975 with one of the industry’s first professional brush collections. In 1978, she and her husband, renowned dermatologist Dr. Ronald Sherman, opened the first medi-spa to unite makeup and dermatology. Today her company is synonymous with the very same prin
ciple that founded her business: Makeup can be life-changing because it’s confidence changing.

  LORETTA MIRANDA is a lawyer specializing in Indian law. She currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her boyfriend, Aaron, and her beloved cat, Ramona Flowers. When she’s not working, she can be found at concerts or binge-watching cat videos on YouTube. Loretta is of Serrano and Cupeño heritage and a descendant of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians.

  GLORIA MOLINA is a pioneer in Los Angeles politics, working in public office since 1982. Her accomplishments include being the first Latina elected to the Los Angeles City Council, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and the California legislature. In April 2006, Gloria was honored as the Hispanic Business Woman of the Year by Hispanic Business magazine.

  SUSAN MORRISON received her undergraduate degree from Drew University, and it was there that she first became involved in campus ministry. After participating in a youth program in Brazil, she returned to the United States to receive a master of divinity from Boston University School of Theology, followed by fellowships in Argentina and Rome. She was elected to the episcopacy in 1988, and as a bishop, she led work camps to Mozambique, Brazil, the Republic of Congo, and Cuba. Her influences include her grandmother Mary Matilda Davies, as well as the Reverend Jeanne Audrey Powers, one of the first United Methodist clergywomen.

  ANNA PONDER attended Spelman (BA), Johns Hopkins (MA), and Yale (PhD). She began her career at ABC News but left to join Senator Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign as Bodyperson to Ernestine Bradley. She served as senior manager of leadership gifts at the Robin Hood Foundation, then as director of marketing and investor relations for several hedge fund firms, including High Rise Capital Management, where she was made a partner. She returned to nonprofit organizations in 2015 as executive director of the Tribeca Film Institute. Her strongest role models are family: her father, Henry Ponder, who spent his career fighting for equal educational opportunities for women and people of color and who instilled in Anna a fierce sense of fairness; her paternal great-aunt Miley Ponder Carson, a female business owner in Depression-era Oklahoma; and her maternal great-grandfather, Roman Freeman Wilson, who escaped slavery in Arkansas to become a landowning farmer in Oklahoma.

  MARGARET SEMRUD-CLIKEMAN was a school psychologist in Wisconsin before receiving her doctorate from the University of Georgia. She was awarded the Early Career Contributions award from the National Academy of Neuropsychology and is a fellow. She has published more than ninety-six articles, seventy-five chapters, and six books as well as making over two hundred presentations. She was also awarded her diplomate from the American Board of Pediatric Neuropsychology. She is currently the division head of clinical behavioral neuroscience at the Academic Health Center at the University of Minnesota. She would like to thank her main mentors, Dr. George Hynd and Dr. Dennis Norman, for all of their support with her career.

  REBECCA SOFFER is a writer, an editor, and a cofounder of Modern Loss, a website and community providing candid conversation on grief and resilience. She is a former producer for the Peabody Award–Winning The Colbert Report, where she (semi) tirelessly accompanied Stephen Colbert on his quest to get to know all 435 US representatives. Rebecca is a nationally recognized speaker on the topic of loss and contributes regularly to publications including Marie Claire, Elle Decor, and Refinery 29. She is an alumna of Emory University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Rebecca lives in New York City with her husband and two young children.

  CHERI STEINKELLNER has earned four Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, a Writers Guild Award, a People’s Choice Award, a Parents’ Choice Award, and the British BAFTA for writing and producing the television shows Cheers and Disney’s Teacher’s Pet with her husband, Bill. Tony-nominated for writing Sister Act: The Musical and an Ovation nominee and Indy Award–winner for Hello! My Baby, Cheri teaches writing at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Barbara and studies depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She also directs award-winning youth theater across the United States. She and Bill live in Santa Barbara, where they raised their three favorite writers/artists/children: Kit, Teddy, and Emma. She has long admired Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Fields, and Dorothy Gale.

  Number one New York Times–bestselling author MARGARET STOHL got her start at a creative-writing program at UEA Norwich, England, and wrote and directed an autobiographical one-act play at Amherst College, where she founded the school’s first women’s literary magazine, Madness This. Since then, Margaret knew she was a writer. If asked, Margaret will tell you that the Women of Marvel panel at New York Comic-Con was the greatest single hour of her life, and that she fangirls all girls who read comics. As a cofounder of Yallfest, the biggest YA book festival in the country, and its offspring Yallwest, Margaret believes her readers are her kindred spirits and her tribe.

  NOOR TAGOURI has embarked on a unique journey to achieve her dreams, breaking down significant barriers in the process. She graduated from the University of Maryland at the age of twenty with a BA in broadcast journalism and international development conflict management. She has hosted several documentary series for Newsy, including Americanize Me, A Woman’s Job, and Sold in America. Additionally, Noor tours as a motivational speaker globally to share her story and to encourage others to embrace their identity and passions.

  TILLIE WALDEN is a cartoonist from Austin, Texas. She is the author-illustrator of Spinning, her graphic memoir, as well as A City Inside, I Love This Part, and The End of Summer. She is also the creator of the self-published and award-winning webcomic On a Sunbeam. Tillie graduated from the Center for Cartoon Studies, a two-year MFA program in White River Junction, Vermont. She works full time creating comics. Her work has been nominated for an Eisner Award, and she has won two Ignatz Awards at the Small Press Expo. Outside of comics, she loves architecture, cats, and going to bed extremely early.

  QUVENZHANÉ WALLIS was born in Houma, Louisiana, to Qulyndreia (Jackson) Wallis, a teacher, and Venjie Wallis Sr., a truck driver. She has one sister, Qunyquekya, and two brothers, Vejon and Venjie Jr. For her first film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, which she filmed when she was six years old, she received an Academy Award nomination for actress in a leading role. She has also starred in Annie, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe, 12 Years a Slave, and Fathers & Daughters, and provided her voice talent to The Prophet and Trolls. Quvenzhané is also the author of A Night Out with Mama and the Shai & Emmie series. She very much looks up to Zendaya, China Anne McClain, Beyoncé, and Viola Davis.

  An internationally recognized director of opera and theater, FRANCESCA ZAMBELLO has served as artistic director of the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center since 2012 and as artistic and general director of The Glimmerglass Festival in Central New York since 2010. Collaborating with outstanding artists and designers and promoting emerging talent, she takes a special interest in new music theater works and producing theater and opera for wider audiences. She has staged many new productions at most of the major theaters, festivals, and opera houses in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Her recent production of Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle, a collaboration between the Washington National Opera and the San Francisco Opera, was an international sensation. An American who grew up in Europe, she speaks French, Italian, German, and Russian. She attended Moscow University and Colgate University. She is married to Faith Gay and is stepmother to Jackson.

  LENORE ZION is a television writer, novelist, and clinical psychologist. As an unrelenting and enthusiastic observer of human behavior, she has a particular fondness for the weirdos and outliers of the world. Her most significant role models are her mother and father, but she is also deeply inspired by the writings of Camille Paglia, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, and Sigmund Freud. She’s an appreciator of outsider art and B-grade horror movies from the 1980s, and she is never, ever bored.

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  SPECIAL THANKS TO

  DR. JULIE EISENGART

  ZAC ELLER

  TIM FEDERLE

  JEAN FEIWEL

  CHAD HODGE

  CONNIE HSU

  ANDREA NELSON MEIGS

  CONRAD RIPPY

  GABRIEL SANDOVAL

  BENNETT SCHLANSKY

  JODY SCHUM

  WILL SCHWALBE

  CHARLES TOLBERT

  ROBERT VENDITTI

  ASHLEY WOODFOLK

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  MELISSA DE LA CRUZ is the #1 New York Times, #1 Publisher’s Weekly and #1 Indie Bound bestselling author of many critically acclaimed and award-winning novels for readers of all ages, and edited the inspiring anthology of true stories, Because I Was a Girl. She grew up in Manila and moved to San Francisco with her family, where she graduated high school salutatorian from The Convent of the Sacred Heart. At Columbia University, she majored in art history and English. Melissa de la Cruz lives in Los Angeles and Palm Springs with her husband and daughter. You can sign up for email updates here.

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