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Most Smith MBA students spend their time in the classroom
learning from top-notch researchers. But a March 2008 event
with School Girls Unite (SGU), a nonprofit advocacy group
for global female education, gave students a unique
opportunity to teach and mentor future community leaders.
A team of Smith MBAs coached 45 female attendees in
public speaking and taught useful presentation skills. The
day included lessons on addressing an audience, making an
elevator pitch, and the “dos and don’ts” of speaking in
front of people. Breakout sessions asked students to give
elevator pitches in front of the group, identify their own
public speaking weaknesses and create a skit that would help
the organization increase its reach.
SGU started in 2004 with a simple goal: “to educate every
girl in the world.” The group began with Shannon Sullivan, a
seventh-grader from Kensington, Md., five other
seventh-graders, four African women in their 20s and several
community activists. Wendy Lesko, who was among the original
organization members, now serves as SGU’s coordinator.
“Shannon certainly deserves a tremendous amount of
credit,” Lesko says. “In the beginning, she invited lots of
people to meetings. Now she lives in Atlanta and is a junior
in high school.”
Today, a group of 20 Maryland girls whose roots include
Bangladesh, Cameroon, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Togo,
Turkey and the United States, work to provide scholarships
for underprivileged girls in Mali. Their efforts, coupled
with donations and sponsorships, have paid for 70 girls’
tuition, textbooks and tutoring.
The event came together thanks to Tiffany Grossman, who
is married to former MBA Association president Rob Grossman,
MBA ’08. Rob helped connect SGU with the Smith School,
recruiting fellow classmates to serve as mentors for the
day.
MBA students Loretta Goodridge, Denise Gonsalves, Rob
Grossman, Tekisha Harvey, Liz Slobasky, and Corrinne
Talley-Hobbs teamed up to teach SGU girls valuable public
speaking skills that can be used in both educational
advocacy and networking.
“We had a great time teaching the girls different skills
we use in everyday networking,” says Goodridge, MBA ’08.
The workshop began with a focus on developing good
presentation skills. Attendees were asked to critique an
actor’s speaking abilities based on a clip from the TV
series “The Office.” Students learned to create unique
elevator pitches and presented skits in front of the entire
group.
Lesko says the feedback from workshop attendees was
positive. “They said things like, ‘I loved it, it was very
inspiring,’ and ‘I learned how to be a better speaker,’” she
says.
The lessons students learned at the workshop proved
invaluable for Melissa Gross, a student at Albert Einstein
High School in Kensington, Md. Gross was part of a group of
education advocates who spoke with Congress members. At the
event, Gross shared her experiences and SGU’s goals with
singer Shakira, and her story was featured on the local
news.
The members of SGU continually raise money to fund
individual growth scholarships for girls in Mali. Along with
SGU’s Mali-based sister organization, Les Filles Unies pour
L’Education, members visit and encourage political and
community leaders to make education a top foreign policy
agenda.
On SGU’s future, Lesko says, “I had read UNICEF reports
and studies that demonstrated the transforming impact of
educating girls. If you educate one boy, you educate one
person. If you educate one girl, she will educate the world.
That’s what we work for.”
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