It wasn't the gorgeous setting or the downtown NYC vibe we felt that made the evening special. It wasn't even seeing our companies' mantras sewn exquisitely onto the softest pajamas ever that thrilled us.

It was the stories.

The stories of founders handpicked by Petite Plume to gather for one night and launch a powerful new initiative called #MadeForChange.

I didn't know all that history about the stock exchange - she knew EVERYTHING!

I liked hearing about the first woman to have a seat on the exchange.

My favorite part? Definitely the bell ringing. Like, DEFINITELY.

They have the best jobs...I'd never work from home if I could work there.

Things I heard as we filed onto the street after celebrating Être's 8th birthday while bells rang at the NYSE.

What made this birthday so special?

It's wasn't just that, as the girls reminded me all day, it was our golden birthday because we turned 8 on May 8th.

As we walked into the flower-filled restaurant amid chatter and laughter, it felt like spring had come to New York City. With mothers and daughters, sisters, aunts, nieces and friends filing in, Mother’s Day had arrived early and smiles were bright.

Bright indeed, since the day was brought to us by The Female Quotient, Invisalign and a host of luminary women and girls offering insights and inspiration we won’t soon forget.

Wait, who was in the room?

Think Female Quotient founder and CEO Shelley Zalis and Kamal Bhandal from Invisalign. Paralympian Lizzi Smith and MommyShorts founder Ilana Wiles. Chef, cookbook author and Food Network star hashtag#AlexGuarnaschelli, DJ Amrit Tietz and Adweek’s Luz Corona, MPS. Romper reporter Jamie Kenney and Être Board member and middle schooler Grayson Sethi.

Mental Health Awareness month begins this week, and young change-makers are more than ready. With riveting stories to tell and award-winning resources to share, students like 20-year-old Areli Rosales are making a major difference this May…exactly when it matters most.

Areli is one of two students recently chosen to receive the 2024 Student Voice of Mental Health Award from The Jed Foundation (JED). JED, a leading nonprofit that protects the emotional health of today’s teens and young adults, honors one high school student and one college student each year creating innovative communities of care in their schools and communities.

When I first heard about Areli, a first-generation college sophomore at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the organization she built called KeepInMind, I not only wanted to know more – I wanted every young person to know about her too. Particularly because according to Être’s latest research, between the ages of 13 and 18 the percentage of girls who say they feel anxious rises by 88% and the percentage who say they feel stressed rises by 241%.

Ninety-five days to go.

Ninety-five days and counting until Paris 2024, and athletes training to earn their spot at the games are fully in the zone.

Particularly those who have already won the gold.

What do these epic athletes want girls to know about what it feels like to serve the winning shot? How to train and where to find their confidence?

Plenty.

Meet 2020 Paralympian Emma Schieck, a recent graduate of UNC and an athlete on the U.S. Women's National Sitting Volleyball Team readying herself and her team to repeat their stunning Tokyo win in 2020 with back-to-back gold medals.

“We’re going to do it,” she told me with a level gaze when we spoke last month, and every fiber in my body believes her.

Hop on Insta or TikTok and you’ll see videos of women and girls discussing their symptoms of autism. Clear-eyed and candid, many of these stories spotlight the frustration they felt when gender imbalances in autism diagnoses led to years of misdiagnoses and missed opportunities.

With so many sharing their experiences about autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and as April is Autism Acceptance Month, I am honored to share the riveting story of Rawan Tuffaha, the lead singer of a group of four musicians on the spectrum making up the band, ASD. Her voice is crystalline – a clarion call to listen and hear what these bandmates have to say. Trust me – click here and listen as you read.

It’s today!

As a member and Chair-Elect of the International Space Station Education Outreach Subcommittee and a mentor connector for girls who love STEM, today’s total solar eclipse is monumental. What time will it start? I’ll be at my desk all day – how can I watch it live? Why is this eclipse so special? What do I look for? What else should I know?

With questions like these coming in fast from students, parents, teachers, and cool aunts everywhere, here is a fast list of tips and viewing tricks you need to know, straight from women in space…two of them literally in space as they speak to us from aboard the International Space Station 265 miles above the Earth.

As we spend the weekend inputting our location to NASA’s website to see exactly when Monday’s eclipse will pass overhead and setting aside stacks of protective glasses, astronaut and researcher Kellie Gerardi has more excitement in store.

A partnership with SunChips featuring a new limited edition flavor mashup in honor of solar eclipse 2024. “I was so excited when SunChips reached out about this particular campaign,” Gerardi told me when we chatted last week, “because my platform is all about harnessing my enthusiasm for space and science and sharing it with as many people as possible.”

I know, it’s not Monday so an Epic Mentor Newsletter edition is unusual. But Chelsey Goodan's new book Underestimated was just named a USA Today National Bestseller (this includes every book currently on the market, in every format and category), so I want to shout it from the rooftops. Her work is powerful, timely, and – my favorite part – perfectly in tune with today’s girls.

How do I know? Être girls brought it up.

We keep hearing about this book - tell us more about the author?

Chelsey Goodan has been a tutor and mentor for over sixteen years, and she focuses particularly on empowering teenage girls. She not only coaches parents on how to better connect with their girls, Goodan talks directly to girls about what they’re feeling and how to unpack those emotions. She’s the mentorship director of DemocraShe, founder of The Activist Cartel, and the author of a brand new book about which Oprah Daily said: “If you have a teenage girl in your life, you need to read this.”

As Women’s History Month and Q1 2024 simultaneously pull to a close, it seems the perfect time to look back on highlights that launched our year and expectations for the quarter ahead. Having come from a background in M&A and a love of all things measurable, each Être quarterly learning report holds a special place for me. With a new name, Mentor Watch, this quarter’s report blew the doors off all of our expectations, and I couldn’t wait to share them.

Today marks the 100th edition of The Epic Mentor Newsletter, so it delights me to dive into the numbers! One hundred weeks of Monday mentor moments, interviews with icons and continuing the conversation between today’s leaders and tomorrow’s workforce that began with our book, The Epic Mentor Guide. One hundred weeks of bringing global girls into the room (or zoom) as they come face to face with women in the workplace.

Her voice is filled with power.

When she speaks the whole room sits up a little straighter.

And, as Lilly Ledbetter gazes levelly into the camera and in her unmistakable accent tells her story, hundreds of women and girls imagine themselves in her shoes.

Because her story is as current as if it had happened today…and her fearlessness will take us all into tomorrow.

By now you’ve seen some of the stats from Être’s powerful new survey. You’ve read that between ages 13 and 18 girls’ confidence drops by 20%. You’ve heard that between the same ages the percentage of girls who say they feel smart and optimistic drops by 50% and 52%, respectively…but that 91% of girls feel higher confidence is directly related to mentorship.

There’s more.

The survey broke new ground, telling us that mentors not only make girls more confident – they encourage and empower them to step out of their comfort zones and try harder things.

Let’s dive into the numbers - here’s some more of what Être found…

Are you ready for it?

Force of Nature: A Celebration of Girls and Women Raising Their Voices, from bestselling author-photographer Kate T. Parker, hits bookstores tomorrow and I could not be more excited. Perfectly timed for International Women’s Day this Friday and Women’s History Month, Parker’s electrifying new book celebrates girls and women finding, using, amplifying, and sustaining their voices to empower themselves and change the world…right now.

Être girls were more than ready for it, having loved her Strong Is the New Pretty series since its release in 2017, and bombarded me with questions in advance of my interview with Parker. What to ask a world-famous author, photographer, director and Ironman whose work has led to collaborations with brands like The Walt Disney Company, Athleta, Kellogg Company and NBCUniversal? Having posed questions to Parker once before in The Epic Mentor Guide, Être girls were ready.

Below is a lightly edited version of my conversation last week with Kate T. Parker – who is, herself, a force of nature.

It’s here.

With the definitive clang of a morning locker slamming shut, Être’s brand new survey The Current State of Girls’ Confidence: How Mentors are Slamming the Confidence Gap Shut Like Lockers was released at 8 am ET today (see the press release here), and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

I used to wonder when we brought girls into boardrooms: Is this confidence boom we see just anecdotal? Could we measure it? And how much of a role in girls’ confidence does the introduction to early mentors play?

The best way to solve a problem is to do the math, and that’s just what we did.

If someone handed you her resume, you’d think she was a seasoned journalist – maybe with an Emmy or two. With a roster of interviews that include Michelle Obama, Chadwick Boseman and former President George W. Bush alongside sports legends like Caitlin Clark, A’ja Wilson, Diana Taurasi, Chloe Kim and Sue Bird, and with her work featured on EPSN, CBS and Sports Illustrated, Pepper Persley is clearly an award-winning journalist on the rise.

She’s also twelve years old.

It’s easier than asking someone to be your valentine – I promise.

Asking someone to be my mentor might sound like the most daunting sentence in…ever, but it doesn’t have to be. And during a week full of candy and flowers, focusing on careers and futures may well be the gift that lasts longer.

How do I even start? As the founder of Être, a girls’ mentorship platform, I hear this question a lot. Closely followed by what exactly should I say and am I too young to ask? Most of the time, as they are spinning in boardroom chairs at companies they voted to visit when they ask, I defer to the women hosting us for answers.

We’re already on our feet cheering.

With National Women & Girls in Sports Day hitting the field this Wednesday, a first-of-its-kind WNBA-NBA competition coming to the paint ten days later, attendance at women’s events reaching record-breaking levels, and the Women’s Sports Foundation turning 50 this spring, 2024 is proving to be game-changing for girls watching sports.

Oh, and there’s a football game on Sunday promising even more rockstar action.

What exactly are girls seeing and why does it matter?

Girls are seeing a groundswell of mentor moments in the form of players, coaches, general managers, and leagues who are working toward their future in sports.

As innovative ideas burst forth in a new year and National Mentoring Month winds to a close, I can’t help but reflect on a group of extraordinary pitches I witnessed at the Girls Into VC Summit at Harvard University last quarter. Speaking on one of the panels and then happily seated in the audience enthralled by undergraduates, surgery fellows, artists and TechStar fellows pitching ideas to a panel of venture capital judges, I was blown away by their expertise and, well…their fearlessness.

It was something to behold.

Because pitching is hard and can be more daunting for young women.

On the heels of our list of 20 Women in AI That Girls Should Know that generated so much interest names are still being highlighted in the comments, and with boots arriving on the ground for NY Fashion Week 2024, we felt another role model list coming on.

Because whether eyeing fashion from afar or chatting directly with industry mentors (hat tip to Emilie Rubinfeld, President of Carolina Herrera, who met with a Club Être chapter just last week), girls are raising their hands with questions: If women do more of the designing in fashion, why aren’t they running more of the companies?

They’re not wrong. According to Forbes, even though women design approximately 40% of womenswear brands, they hold only 14% of leadership positions in the largest fashion companies. Moreover, they lead less than 13% of Fortune 1000 Retail & Apparel companies.

Can female founders in fashion fix it?

You bet.