The Smart Girls Group: an Incredible Fordham Experience

Over the past two years, I have been asked many times about the best part of Fordham. My answer has always been, and always will be, the people I have met here. The people at Fordham are some of the most driven, inspiring, caring people i have ever met. One of my friends is an incredible example of this spirit within the Fordham community. One of my good friends Emily Raleigh, a sophomore in the Gabelli School of Business, founded her own company two years ago as a senior in college, and it has flourished.

Emily Raleigh, Gabelli School of Business Class of 2016, and founder of the Smart Girls Group

I feel incredibly lucky not only to know Emily, but also to work for her company the Smart Girls Group. The Smart Girls Group is a social enterprise dedicated to empowering the next generation of influential women. The Smart Girls Group has campus chapters, online classes, an online magazine, and an international sisterhood. The Smart Girls Group's office is located at the Fordham Foundry, a small business incubator just outside Fordham's Rose Hill campus. The Foundry helps student entrepreneurs, like my friend Emily, get their small businesses started. 

With the Smart Girls Group, I serve as the Deputy Editor for our monthly magazine, the Smart Girls Guide. One of my main duties as the Deputy Editor is to read and edit every article before it gets published in the magazine. I also review the magazine one last time after it has been put together to catch any last-minute mistakes or typos. With this job, I get the opportunity to work with the incredible girls of the Smart Girls Group staff, and collaborate with them on ideas how to further the company and make a bigger impact on the rising global community of driven young women. 

A past issue of the Smart Girls Guide magazine

Being a friend of the founder of the company, I have an inside look at what it is like to work in a social enterprise, which is what I would like to do post graduation. Emily inspires me, and many others, every day, and she is one of many students at Fordham who are doing incredible things to change the Fordham community and the world. But these students working to change the world are often doing so very quietly, and you may not know about it unless you know them personally. Dinner conversations with Emily have come to include pitching new ideas to better Smart Girls Group, planning collaborations and sponsorships with powerful people and companies, and discussing crucial issues of feminism, like whether Beyonce or Sheryl Sandburg is more inspiring. The definitive answer to that question was never decided, but we concluded they're both very important in their own ways.