Visual Arts

Student talent shone in the studios and at the Spring Arts Festival. Clockwise, pieces are by Chiara Tesoriero '22 / Izzy Saulino '22 / Caroline Ross '22 / Juri Kim '24 / Sabine Luk '24 / Zoe Anaya '24 / Abby Anderson '25 / Camille Campain '23.

LEYMAH GBOWEE

2011 Nobel Peace Prize Recipient

"Find yourself, find your voice. You can know yourself, but people will not know you if you don’t have a voice.”

- Inspiring Boldness Speaker Leymah Gbowee

SSpeaking to Marymount students in

November of 2021, Leymah Gbowee highlighted the importance of girls being bold. “Find yourself. There’s absolutely no way any of you can be bold if you don’t know who you are.”

As she stood at the podium talking to the students in her bold red glasses,

Ms. Gbowee emphasized that she wasn’t talking about the socially constructed roles that girls and young women today are assigned; she asked students to think about who they were deep down, “I had to find that I was a fearless warrior. I was a nobody little girl.” With her indelible charming humor, Ms. Gbowee challenged students to think about forming who they were, “If you don’t remember anything else from today, aside from my beauty, my glasses, my red lipstick, please remember this: Find yourself.”

Ms. Gbowee received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her work in leading a Women’s Peace Movement that brought an end to the second Liberian Civil War in 2003. She was just seventeen years old when the First Liberian Civil War started. She was the same age as many girls at Marymount, and lived with her parents and sisters in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, when the war arrived at her doorstep. While she dealt with the brutalities of the ongoing conflict, Ms. Gbowee became a young mother to four children.

"The boldness she has carried with her throughout life has inspired our Marymount community to serve as leaders for progress and change," said Banou Nazemi '22, who had the honor of having lunch with Ms. Gbowee after her talk to students. Being able to meet her, listen to her words, and see the passion with which Ms. Gbowee spoke about each topic has deeply motivated Nazemi to strive to be more bold.

Having witnessed the devastating effects the fighting was having on people around her, Ms. Gbowee enrolled in a program to train as a trauma counselor to treat women who had been raped, child soldiers, and children who had seen their families murdered. The work she carried out forged her belief that women had a responsibility to the next generation to proactively restore peace, leading her to become a founding member and Liberia’s Coordinator of the Women in Peacebuilding Network.

Through her leadership, thousands of women-led nonviolent protests and staged pray-ins demanding reconciliation and the resuscitation of peace talks. A defining moment in her movement presented itself when peace talks stalled, and Ms. Gbowee, alongside nearly 200 women, formed a human barricade to prevent representatives of the then Liberian President Charles Taylor and the rebel warlords from leaving the meeting hall for food or any other reason until, the women demanded, the men reached a peace agreement. Because of her bold action, Mr. Taylor was pressured into exile and the foundation was laid for the election of Africa’s first female head of state, fellow 2011 Nobel Laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Ms. Gbowee’s journey and efforts to bring peace to Liberia are documented in the award-winning 2008 documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell. The documentary highlights how Gbowee and women like her utilized the power of social cohesion and relationship-building in the face of political unrest and social turmoil, with triumphant success.

The Marymount community was grateful to Ms. Gbowee for her inspiring words, and for giving witness to the remarkable difference one woman can make in the world.

"Ms. Gbowee's words, actions, thoughts, and entire presence of being has inspired this community to carry even just a fraction of her boldness with them as they go out into

the world," - Banou Nazemi '22

Inspiring Boldness Speaker: Leymah Gbowee

Watch 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate Leymah Gbowee's talk to students as part of Marymount's Inspiring Boldness Series by scanning the QR code above.