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Student Graduates from Girls With Impact

Head shot of student Kristen St. Louis '21

June 27, 2019

Kristen St. Louis ’21 recently completed the spring Girls With Impact program. Girls With Impact, an after-school entrepreneurship academy, is offered to girls ages 14-17 where they have the opportunity to present venture capitalists with project ideas that they create. Kristen presented her company, Mirror Me, a platform for teenagers and parents/caregivers of teenagers to easily find diverse books and storylines. “I had been looking into starting my own non-profit in middle school but didn’t have the tools. This program gave me the tools I needed and had been looking for. Now I can start my venture/project,” said Kristen.

Throughout the 12-week Academy, Kristen jumped online for 50 minutes every week to connect with her coach along with local and cross-country student peers. Topics ranged from identifying problems and targeting customers to marketing, finances and building an advisory board. “The coaches present the main points of business in an easy to understand way – they break it down into interesting points. In the course’s weekly session, you get to speak about your project and get really helpful feedback from your classmates, as well as a personalized calls with your coach. The coaches really guide you and help point you in the right direction,” said Kristin.

Girls With Impact offers a live, online, real-time “mini-MBA” from the comfort of home. The program, designed with Harvard experts, moves girls from idea to a full business plan. The program is changing the future of these young women’s lives with exponential spikes in confidence, majors in business or entrepreneurship and college scholarships.

“It was amazing to watch Kristen be involved in such a wonderful program that focuses on girls. Girls With Impact provides girls with the opportunity to create a vision and gives them the tools to make their visions happen. Additionally, Girls With Impact helps girls believe that in the future that they can be their own bosses. This program allowed for Kristen to see that if she can put it on paper, she can make it happen. Girls With Impact pushed Kristen to see a problem and try to fix it using her unique hobbies and interests,” said Evelyn Mendez-St Louis, Kristen’s mother. Kristin and her family are from Bronx, New York.

Hear Kristen share more insight about her project: