Meet Our Supporters
| Andrea Johnston and Gloria Steinem co-founded Girls Speak Out (GSO) in 1994. Original collaborators included girls and women students, teachers and mothers from the ages of 9-71 who met in Andrea's living room during the summer of 1994. The YWCA of the USA and the Third Wave Foundation piloted the program in 1995. Our founding supporters include Marlo Thomas and Alice Walker. Andrea Johnston  Andrea Johnston is an expert on children's development and resilience. She travels internationally to help inspire girls and boys to be their true selves, and connect them with supportive individuals and organizations. Andrea was instrumental in creating a public forum for girls in the UN General Assembly as part of her mission to expand the places where girls belong. She is the founder of the Girls Speak Out Foundation, an advocacy organization working with girls and their supporters on five continents. Andrea is currently writing a monthly online column for and about girls at feminist.com. Read her columns here.A 30-year veteran of public and private school teaching on both US coasts, Andrea's groundbreaking articles on sexual harassment in the schools were among the first to highlight how girls and their mothers are using Title IX protections to level the playing field inside and outside the classroom. Andrea convened and helped organize the First National Girls Conference at UNICEF House in New York in 1997. She has organized and led presentations in venues that range from the General Assembly of the United Nations, CNN Center and public housing meeting rooms. GSO is a recipient of a Soros Foundation/Open Society Award, and Andrea was recently honored as one of Fiji's Women of the Year. Gloria Steinem  Gloria Steinem is one of the most influential writers, lecturers, editors, and activists of our time. She travels worldwide as a lecturer and feminist organizer, and is a frequent media spokeswoman on issues of equality. She is particularly interested in the shared origins of sex and race caste systems; gender roles and child abuse as the roots of violence; non-violent conflict resolution; the cultures of indigenous peoples; and organizing across national boundaries for peace and justice.In 1972, Ms. Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine, and remained one of its editors for fifteen years. She continues to serve as a consulting editor for Ms., and was instrumental in the magazine's recent move to join forces with the nonprofit Feminist Majority Foundation. She was the founding president of the Ms. Foundation for Women, a national multi-racial, multi-issue fund that supports grassroots projects to empower women and girls, and also a founder of its Take Our Daughters to Work® Day, a first national day devoted to girls that has now become an institution here and in other countries. Parenting magazine selected her for its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995 for her work in promoting girls' self-esteem, and Biography magazine listed her as one of the 25 most influential women in America. In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. She now lives in New York City, and is currently at work on Road to the Heart: America As if Everyone Mattered, a book about her more than thirty years on the road as a feminist organizer. Website and Animation Information Original Website Design: Artistry of Amelia Bellows at amelia@ameliabellows.com Website Upgrades: Talents of Janeen Jang, www.eightize.com Animation Design: Vision of G. Melissa Graziano at GMGraziano@ucla.edu G. Melissa Graziano has been enchanted with animation filmmaking since fourth grade. After years of drawing and writing on her own, she attended Central Connecticut State University where she majored in Media Art and minored in Creative Writing. While there, she participated in a year-long study abroad at the University of Central Lancashire, where she studied Animation exclusively and met her fiance. After graduating from CCSU, she is currently attending the University of California at Los Angeles, working towards her MFA in Animation. Melissa has always been interested in not only telling stories, but using those stories to change people's perspectives on often sensitive subjects. Storytelling is how we learn, and it is particularly important when educating children to tell them stories that will give them a sense of compassion, creativity, and self-empowerment. She believes that animation filmmaking is the best medium to tell such stories because of its unlimited creative potential. |
