In 2008 I graduated magna cum laude with highest honors from Harvard, where I studied French literature and sixteenth-century history. I thought I would be doing that for my entire life. But I was also really passionate about making a difference in my community. So while studying, I started a program to provide the homeless with direct access to resources in the only student-run shelter in the country. I won the Houston and Ames awards at Harvard for individual leadership and change to the community. It changed my ideas about the impact I wanted to have on the world. To complete my studies, I went on to receive my Masters in International Political Economy from Sciences Po and the London School of Economics because I thought the value of my work would be maximized by working for an international organization.
My work on gender and equality started at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where I learned that no investment project was gender neutral. I became convinced of the fact we lived in a crucial era in which we had to create proactive measures to create equality or else it would never emerge itself. It was the experience that gave me the impulse to do more, but in my own way. I later created the non-profit organization Led By HER which empowers women who have suffered from violence through entrepreneurship. Creating Led By HER was a way to give different forms of entrepreneurship a voice, and to raise a new form of awareness about gender based violence.
