Two years ago, she was a first-year signing up for Women’s Leadership Initiative’s (WLI’s) conference committee. Now, Sabrina Guo helps run the entire organization. Over two years, she rose from member to conference co-director and now co-president for 2025–26.

“I’ve invested a tremendous amount of time and energy into WLI, which is integral to my mission of women and girls’ empowerment,” she said. “At its core, WLI builds bridges across communities, barriers, and borders. We uplift each other and empower one another.”

Women’s empowerment programs have become fixtures of higher education over the past decades. Highlights include Harvard Women in Business’s 34th Annual Conference, which features a Female Founders Pitch Competition, Princeton’s Young Women’s Conference in STEM, and Barnard’s Athena Center for Leadership, which offers mentorship and civic-engagement opportunities. Colleges often present these initiatives as progress toward equity, promising networking, mentorship, and platforms to amplify women’s voices. 

As empowerment programs continue to grow, students are developing new models that build on university initiatives and extend their impact beyond the college campus. One example is Yale’s Women’s Leadership Initiative, which connects undergraduates with alumni mentors and high-school fellows through essay contests and mentorship programs.

Isabella Mandis, a Harvard student, founded Girls Into VC in December 2022 after realizing she was often “the only girl in the room” in campus investing clubs.

“Women represent only about nine percent of venture capitalists, and female-founded startups receive just two percent of venture dollars,” she said. “I started Girls Into VC to close that gap by creating an early pipeline for women through education, community, and access to opportunities. The growth and engagement have been incredible. In just over two years, Girls Into VC has become a global nonprofit of more than 10,000 members across 75 countries and 200 campuses.”

Rather than remaining campus-based, Girls Into VC reflects how grassroots efforts are expanding across borders. Its network of student-led chapters now connects women from major cities to smaller universities around the world, creating what Mandis calls “a global ecosystem for future investors and founders.” Through this cross-campus model, the organization is redefining empowerment as something collective and scalable, proof that student-led initiatives can spark global change.

Still, questions remain. Do these initiatives mainly serve students who already have access to networks and elite institutions? According to Dr. Julie Zeilinger, author of A Little F’d Up: Why Feminism Is Not a Dirty Word, college empowerment spaces can inadvertently center privilege if they’re not intentional about inclusivity, she wrote in her book.

However, both Guo and Mandis are reimagining empowerment to reach further and include more, emphasizing that it must extend beyond campus. For Guo, extending empowerment beyond campus begins with WLI’s new High School Fellowship Program, which will mentor and engage students to advocate for gender equity in their own schools and communities. For Mandis, Girls Into VC is practical, community-driven, and designed with input from real investors. “Grassroots initiatives often move faster and meet students where they are,” she said.

Their efforts reflect the broader movements reshaping empowerment worldwide, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s $2.5 billion initiative advancing women’s health and education globally to Vital Voices Global Partnership, founded by Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright in 1997 and focused on investing in and amplifying women leaders worldwide, especially those creating local social impact. Meanwhile, platforms such as Shift are elevating Gen Z voices of color and positioning young women as leaders of cultural change.

As Mandis explained, “Our campus chapters provide a local presence while connecting students to a global network.” For students like her and Guo, empowerment is not a slogan or even a campus initiative. It is the work of connection, opening doors, amplifying voices, and ensuring that leadership reaches beyond the boundaries of their campuses. Moreover, it is part of a global movement they are helping to build.

This article was written for the Yale Daily News’ 2025 Summer Journalism Program for high school students.