Girls Ignited: Changemakers Summit 2022 took place on March 19, 2022. WSTA was a proud partner that agreed to host the live event on Zoom and share the event reel on our website and YouTube channel.

Girls Ignited empowers, inspires, and encouraged girls and young women via nominated changemaker features. After completing its first 100, it hosted the summit so attendees could hear from some of them about their paths and how to navigate their passion projects, career and educational pursuits, and more.

 

Changemakers Summit 2022 was a free virtual event with a fireside chat and Q&A with girls and young women who are founders, entrepreneurs, activists, or in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) field and 25 years old and under. They live in Cyprus, Florida, Africa, New York, New Hampshire, and Washington State.

 

Girls Ignited is founded by our Youth Mentor, Merrill.

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Speakers

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• Sophie Beren, CEO of The Conversationalist, a go-to destination for Gen Z covered by Entrepreneur, Dazed, Huffington Post, Forbes, Elite Daily, and more.

• Eleni Charitonos, The world’s first Cypriot analog astronaut, founder of Glasgow University Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, Royal Astronomical Society UK fellow, and participant in a LunAres mission in Poland and a 33-day mission at the Hawai‘i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (home to five successful long-duration NASA Mars simulation missions).

• Rosalie Fish, a Cowlitz Tribe member, UW track & field runner, and activist who made international headlines when she painted a red handprint over her mouth, the fingers extending across her cheeks to honor the lives of missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW).

• Caeley Looney, Founder/CEO of Reinvented Magazine – the nation’s first print magazine by and for girls and women in STEM, an aerospace engineer, maker, and mental health advocate.

• Ellyanne Wanjiku, Africa's youngest climate change ambassador and founder of Children With Nature, a nonprofit that partners with 80 public schools to produce fruit for food-insecure students and generate income through the sale of seedlings. Her efforts have led to the planting of 1.3 million trees in Kenya.

• Parmis Mokhtari-Dizaji, the summit’s panel moderator, Youth Leadership Board president for Code Your Chances, and a sophomore at Phillips Exeter Academy.

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Sponsors and Partners

Professional Options, West Sound Technology Association, The Power of 100 Girls, Etre Girls, Girls Inc. of the Pacific Northwest, Code Your Chances, and Whatever It Takes

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More information about Girls Ignited and the summit here