Meet Isabella Mandis, the Harvard sophomore empowering the next generation of female venture capitalists.

Then meet the community of 200+ women and allies who gathered in Cambridge, Massachusetts yesterday to envision a more inclusive venture capital and startup landscape.

With Veteran’s Day coming up this week, our heads turn to honoring those who have served our country to secure and preserve peace. And with 16.2M veterans in the United States as of last year, representing 6.2% of the total civilian population aged 18 and over, our gratitude extends far and wide.

It extends, in fact, to the families of these veterans and, in my case, to the children. In addition to missing their parents during deployments and experiencing the trauma of a wounded or deceased parent, military kids face challenges unique to their circumstances and often hard for the rest of us to understand.

In Être’s third season as a licensed TED-Ed Club, I am watching a stellar class of girls take the mic. Their ideas couldn’t be bigger, and I could not be more proud. Throughout the year I get a lot of questions about the TED-Ed program, and as we get to filming week and our attention centers on the stories being shared, inquiries rise to a fever pitch.

While we wait to upload our talks to TED-Ed, here are a few answers to frequently-asked questions and a teaser as to the mentors advising our students this year. All of it will blow your mind.

A soap that treats skin cancer.

A patch that delivers medicine without pills or needles.

A glove that detects seizures and tracks them through a phone app.

All ground-breaking discoveries recently announced by 3M.

All developed by middle school scientists with mentors.

One of the reasons I love writing about the 3M Young Scientist Challenge every year is the mentorship aspect that inspires and empowers America’s Top Young Scientists. Now in its sixteenth year, the Young Scientist Challenge reaches deep into middle schools across the U.S. to pull novel STEM-based solutions to modern problems into brighter light.

On Day of the Girl 2023 Être was invited into the room at the UN, and a lot happened.

We actually found ourselves in a number of rooms – each one showcasing women in power.

Women of influence.

Women with impact.

And it felt good.

Because during a week of unspeakable horror, when helplessness and fear streamed through our feeds, women holding seats for us in rooms of action gave Day of the Girl extra purpose and meaning. It was the right trip at exactly the right time.

As the eyes of the world are on Israel and the Middle East today, and top UN officials continue to meet behind closed doors, Être girls are readying themselves to spend this Wednesday, International Day of the Girl, in the same corridors at the United Nations.

Day of the Girl 2023 is particularly meaningful for us, not only because it marks the fourth anniversary of our first book Être: Girls, Who Do You Want To Be, the first anniversary of our national study on girls’ confidence, and the kick-off to a highly-anticipated series of quarterly visits for middle and high-school girls at the UN, but because Être girls have already been raising their voices in this hall.

“I’ve, like, never played poker before. What if I don’t get any good cards?”

“My brother said he would teach me, but I definitely think I’d rather learn from women who play all the time. I can make all my mistakes here.”

Overheard last week as NYC girls in their teens and early twenties pulled up chairs to poker tables at Gotham Hall.

“I thought I wouldn’t win…but then I thought I would just try to raise [the bid] anyway…and I won! It was so surprising and I felt so powerful.”

“It is an incredible honor to be sitting in this chair,” began Meet the Press’ newest moderator Kristen Welker last week, “and I feel the huge responsibility it carries. I also want to recognize all of the women, all of the people of color, who’ve been pathfinders to make this moment possible – as well as all of the journalists who’ve mentored me along the way.”

Back to school is all about new beginnings.

It’s school supplies and fall schedules. Sport try-outs and club sign-ups. Familiar faces walking next to new names, and friendships that can spark from that first hey in the hall.

Friendships that can become powerful.

When I launched Être, a mentorship platform bringing girls face to face with female leaders, my favorite thing was to make new friends. Every company we visited – from Spotify to Google to Morgan Stanley and more – wanted to suggest more women we should meet. And as we expanded, establishing clubs in six countries, gathering advice from 200+ women in our books, and ringing the Closing Bell with role models at NASDAQ, one thing remained constant: the friendships we were forming had a powerful impact on girls everywhere.

Tape them to your locker.

Make them your screensaver.

Pass them to a friend.

As girls head back to class with backpacks slung over shoulders and women stride into work with fall strategies in mind, the back-to-school season fills us with promise and potential. Even on days like today when our heads are bowed and our hearts are full, there is comfort to be found in the words of wise women, and inspiration to be stored and savored as leaves start to fall.

The future of AI looks bright.

The future of ethical AI is particularly bright when viewed through the eyes of Neha Shukla, the 18-year-old AI innovator earning the praise of industry leaders decades her senior.

Tell us more about her, urged Être girls.

We’re sorry to interrupt your summer, but the 2024 primaries start 5 months from today. WHO. IS. READY.

So began an Instagram post that caught my eye from I am a voter®, the non-partisan organization shifting modern narratives around voting and civic engagement.

And as we celebrated Women’s Equality Day this weekend, honoring the passage of the 19th Amendment which granted some women (not all) the right to vote, an answer kept circling in my mind.

Young women are ready.

How was your summer? What’d you do?

Questions teens will be asking each other as they swing backpacks over shoulders and head back to school.

Sports…summer jobs…extra classes might be typical answers heard in the halls.

I started leaving positive messages for people on Post-it® Notes and then it turned into a nationwide movement that went viral.

This one got our attention.

The legends are back. And girls everywhere are flipping out.

Stunning crowds as they leapt from floor to beam to bars, Olympians Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee, and Jordan Chiles sprang back into action this month with all eyes set on next week’s 2023 U.S. Championships in San Jose, California and then Paris Summer Olympics in 2024.

When Threads exploded onto the social media scene July 5th, celebratory fireworks were in order. Amassing 100M users in the first five days and augmenting its offerings with quick rounds of updates in response to user feedback, the app hit the summer ground running with one simple message: Say more.

August starts tomorrow, and in celebration the United Nations is launching a first-of-its-kind month-long spotlight on young change-makers.

And well before they head back to class, students everywhere are raising their hands to be seen.

Have questions about how it started and how to be involved?

Être did too – passing you the notes right here:

Start at the beginning: Who is the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth?

As Barbie tells us in her record-breaking hit movie, there is nothing you can’t be.

And as her marketing team showed us in the months leading up to this weekend’s release, there is no industry they can’t touch.

With more than 100 promotional partners and a $155M domestic box office opening weekend (keep reading for the global numbers), it is worth taking a deep dive into Barbie's dream pool of marketing campaigns to see why it worked.

With stars of all ages donning cleats and taking the field this week, the 2023 Women’s World Cup is set to make history.

And we are so here for it.

As soccer obsessed Etre girls around the world gather to watch the games, organizing viewing parties at all hours, we wanted to answer their questions and highlight new role models.

Because when history is made, new goals are set.

Have you heard? Pssst – pass it on.

As of last week, for the first time in history a majority of the Ivy League schools are being led by women.

It’s true. And in a summer brimming with news on education (think rulings on affirmative action and student debt), a new headline is emerging and it’s worth taking a moment to highlight: six of the eight Ivies - a group comprised of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and Penn - have women at the helm.

As we move past H1 2023 and head towards Independence Day, all of us at Être are pausing for a beat. Reeling from the latest Supreme Court rulings while listening to the wise words of our role models, we are also stopping to savor the view as we look back on a truly epic six months.