INSPIRING TOMORROW’S LEADERS
6
How we started
Michelle Levy, CEO and Founder
I wanted young black girls to see themselves in successful black women.
My story starts from the humble beginnings of a teenaged Puerto Rican mother and an AfricanAmerican father who passed away before I was five years old. I was raised by my grandparents, and later due to my desire to obtain a better education, boarded with a white middle class family in the suburbs of upstate New York. My story is truly a ‘Tale of Two Cities.’ I wondered many times later in the more successful chapters of my life, once achieving two master degrees, and starting my own angel investing syndicate, what would have happened to me without the role models and mentorship I was blessed to receive as an impressionable girl. Over the years I’ve always had a passion for mentoring young people and coaching budding entrepreneurs. Through my work with a previous mentoring programme for disadvantaged girls in London, two things became very clear. First, there is a tremendous disparity between state schools and private schools (where I am fortunate to
be able to send my children). Given the pressures and challenges faced by state schools, I could see there was a gap between the breadth of skills, support, and exposure my daughter was obtaining from her private education and what the girls in the mentoring programme were able to access. Second, the mentoring programme had very few mentors of African and African Caribbean heritage. Due to the lack of exposure to role models in their personal environment, the young black girls needed to see themselves in successful women. For me, it was a question of how to bring my incredible network of high-achieving black women together as a community and attempt to fill that gap for these bright and very abled young black girls? Hence, the concept of Inspiring Tomorrow’s Leaders was born. In, 2017, I started planting the seeds to build the initial network of women who would later become the role models for our pilot programme, the Leadership Conference that took place in July 2018. By January
2018, I co-founded Areté Network, which is an organisation made up of successful and motivated professional women of African and Caribbean heritage from various industries and walks of life. While working to organise and rally the women, I also planned and organised the 2018 Conference. I funded the pilot conference myself. I knew that if I could create what I had in mind, the support would eventually materialise. By August 2018, I was able to secure 80% of the cost of the conference from corporate sponsors through women who attended. For 2019, with the incredible support of Barings, we have increased the number of role models from 30 to 50 and students from 80-100 from the previous year. We continue to grow. Since July of 2018, we have impacted the lives of over 180 girls, helping them to dream of a brighter and more promising future. On my journey with the girls and women who made this charity possible, there are many people to thank and recognise. None of this could have been possible
