Having a slightly more flexible schedule this year has given me the opportunity to travel to schools and speak to students about YALDAH, my life, dreams, and inspiration. I had one extremely busy week in December where I spoke in 3 schools within the week. First was an evening program for Bais Rivkah 12th grade in Crown Heights, where I spoke about “The Power of YOU” – shaping your future. That’s one of the messages I try to give girls all the time: if you have a dream or a goal, now is the time to start working on it. What are you doing today to help you create the person you want to become?
A few days later I was in Monsey, NY speaking to the 12th grade at Bais Yaakov D’Rav Hirsch. The girls in this college-level business class were eager to hear about my own business experience, and flooded me with insightful questions for over an hour. It was great to connect with such passionate Jewish girls. A special thank you to Shoshana Raff, their teacher, for making the visit possible. Here’s a photo of me with the class:

I went straight from Monsey to Southern Connecticut Hebrew Academy in New Haven where I did three different presentations the next day. I started off with the high school girls, speaking about dreams and goals. Then I gave a short presentation about YALDAH to the whole school, followed by a special presentation for 5th & 6th graders about my publishing journey and how they can get involved. Here’s a photo with the 5th & 6th graders, who were very excited about YALDAH:
There was one Israeli girl in the class who was trying to hard to understand the presentation, but was having a hard time because of the language barrier. I was so touched when she came to me afterwards and gave me this portrait — down to the details of exactly what I was wearing that day!
If you’d like me to speak to your school or synagogue visit http://jewishgirlsunite.com/publicspeaking for more information.