Lauren Kearney

"When I was four years old I wanted to play soccer with my brothers but I was wearing a fancy pink dress.  My mother said I could play soccer with the boys, but I had to change clothes. I wanted to do both - I wanted to wear my dress while playing soccer. Instead I stayed in my dress and watched them play from the sidelines. Then, when I became a mother, I became the hero of my own story. Being a mother made me brave and not afraid of anything. I went from being an introvert to talking to strangers, talking to everyone and being an advocate for my daughter. If I hadn't had my daughter and told her bedtime stories I would never have written my book, Ellie Bixby and the Window to Darvlian Orpth"  Lauren Kearney is an author and mother living in Los Angeles.

Adriana Gascoigne

Big News: @Amazon Web Services collaborated with Me&EVE at the Girls in Tech conference this year. For the rest of the week I will be sharing what we produced. Thank you again Amazon Web Services for helping me give women an opportunity to be seen and heard. “I wanted this conference to bridge tech with emotional intelligence. I wanted to feature powerful and successful women who are relatable. If the audience can relate, reaching their own goals becomes a reality because ‘you can’t be what you can’t see.’ I think the X factor has to do with being inspired. If you find your passion and your purpose, then work won’t feel like work and you will have endless energy.” --Adriana Gascoigne, CEO of Girls in Tech

Christine Adair

Big News: @Amazon Web Services collaborated with Me&EVE at the Girls in Tech conference this year. For the rest of the week I will be sharing what we produced. Thank you again Amazon Web Services for helping me give women an opportunity to be seen and heard. “I don’t feel like diversity should be an initiative – it shouldn’t need to be forced. At Amazon Web Services, the diversity feels natural because we value diversity of thought, which leads to innovation. And that spills over into everything we do. The focus is always the customer.” –Christine Adair, Security Manager, Amazon Web Services

Kara Kelty

"When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines I was assigned to work together with a male Peace Corps Volunteer. At first the Filipino community would only listen to him. They would always ask him the questions first and they would be patient and try to derive meaning from what he was saying even though I spoke Waray, the local dialect, and better than he did. I realized the only way they were ever going to listen to me was if I spoke the language fluently - so I studied the dialect and once I could really speak their language, they took me seriously. The other Peace Corps Volunteer suddenly realized that I had really learned to speak Waray and wanted me to teach him.  This experience made me realize that I had always been doing this, I had always been compensating in my life - working harder to be better prepared in order to be heard." Kara Kelty is the Manager for Candidate Ready Development at Leadership for Educational Equity.

Mary Mitchell

Mary Mitchell"I was given the tribal name "Aqua" which means: Born on Wednesday. Wednesday was the first day I ever touched my foot down on Ghanian soil. I now have the responsibility of being a Queen Mother for a village in Ghana. A hand-carved stool was made for me to sit on during the ceremony and the community asked my forgiveness for the slave trade and its impact on African American history." - Mary Mitchell is a volunteer with Voices of African Mothers and find out more about her work in Ghana at Moadewix.com.

Nana Fosu-Randall

The State of Women0233"I was in Liberia right after the war, working for the United Nations, and I saw this girl who had no hands.  The girl was maybe 13 years old and she was sitting in a chair with a baby in her lap. I couldn't believe it - I had been working for the United Nations for many decades and had seen the aftermath of war in Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq and Israel but this was different. Maybe because Liberia is very close to Ghana, where I am from,  seeing that girl changed my world. I wondered how is she going to care for herself, how can she ever clean herself with no hands. When I returned to the United States I knew I had to address the turmoil in Africa and I started my organization, Voices of African Mothers in order to address poverty and hunger and to educate women." - Nana Fuso-Randall is the founder and President of Voices of African Mothers.