Founded by teachers
Co-Founders Edith, Nell, Sabina and Eve met as teachers working at a school in a disadvantaged area of West London.
We were deeply concerned by the low wellbeing and lack of confidence we observed in our female pupils. We were also frustrated that gender inequality was not being tackled effectively enough at an early stage.
In 2017, we decided to have a go at addressing the issues ourselves, and ran a programme of weekly workshops for a group of teenage girls over the course of one academic year.
Why our solution worked
The feedback from students and their parents told us that we'd inspired and motivated the girls to an extent we never would have managed in our normal classroom teacher roles.
And because we really knew our students, we were able to connect with them in a way that external organisations would struggle to.
We were also able to tailor our workshops around their interests and needs, and collectively work to change the school culture to be more aware of gender inequality. Since then, we’ve seen similar impact in many other school communities.
Empowering teachers to empower girls
We founded Be Her Lead in 2018 and ran our first pilot in 2019 in 11 schools. Since then we have run programmes in a total of 65 schools serving disadvantaged communities, training over 300 teachers to run workshops for over 900 girls aged between 8 and 18.
We have also built a network of hundreds of female teachers, educators and women who share our mission and participate in events like our conference, virtual coffee series and projects like our lockdown zine.
Nell now works full-time directing Be Her Lead, while fellow Co-Founders Edith, Eve and Sabina continue to work in schools and support Be Her Lead on our Advisory Board and in other ways.