Tammy Tibbetts
Lindsay Brown, STF Volunteer and Seventeen Magazine October cover girl. Photo courtesy of She’s the First
By Vivian Nunez
On a normal day you will find Tammy Tibbetts sitting at her desk with teal and magenta colored She’s the First gear, cupcake ornaments, and images of young girls from all over the world surrounding her. She is a 26-year-old former magazine editor taking on girls’ education with an organization that as Tammy said, “started as a piece of my heart, but before long became an international network of students, educators, and volunteers.”
Tammy is the President and Founder of She’s the First, an organization that started as a media campaign in 2009 and recently became a full-fledged 501(c) (3) not-for-profit organization. She’s the First has grown under the attentive eye of Tammy Tibbetts, who up until this year was a full-time volunteer for her own organization. The original media campaign and ultimate vision for She’s the First grew from both Tammy’s journalism background and a life changing trip she took to Liberia.
“My vision is to use the power of storytelling to promote digital literacy and cross-cultural dialogue among youth worldwide,” said Tammy, “and use social media to create social change.”
She has used the power of social media to delve into issues that have been plaguing the world for years, creating a growing brand presence on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Many of the current volunteers and chapter members of She’s the First have found out about She’s the First through social media sites this is why, “beyond supporting girls’ education in the developing world, She’s the First also has the unique opportunity to drive involvement, leadership, and experience among students in the U.S.,” said Tammy Tibbetts. Her drive to empower girls worldwide is one of the reasons why there are now 40 She’s the First Campus Chapters in the US and more than 265 girls being sponsored to date.
Yet, Tammy said that she “didn’t just hop out of bed one day and say let me start a non-profit organization.” At age 23, all she wanted to do was bring awareness, through a PSA YouTube video, to what the lack of girls’ education really meant. A video that was influenced heavily by her experience in Liberia where she said she saw the “transformative impact an education could have on a child and the only hope of breaking the poverty cycle.” She hashed out the details of the mission statement “on a sweltering hot August evening in my Upper West Side apartment,” she said, with Christen Brandt, the current Director of International Operations. By mere coincidence the She’s the First video ended up snowballing into “a movement led by Millenials,” explained Tammy, “women declaring their ‘firsts’ in creative ways to show that with an education, we can break barriers, pay it forward, and ultimately eliminate gender disparities in the classrooms worldwide.”
She’s the First’s connection with the Millenial age group has also led Tammy to become a mentor to many girls she comes across. She does not hesitate to “take everyone under her wing…she is probably a personal mentor to hundreds of young women,” said Meaghan O’Connor, a She’s the First volunteer. “Mentoring is so rewarding,” said Tammy, “if you empower others to succeed and they in turn then pay it forward, you’ve created an incredible ripple effect that will far exceed anything you are individually capable of.”
The stance Tammy takes on mentoring is also the stance she takes in regards to girls’ education and She’s the First. “Scale of impact is very important to us at She’s the First, but at the end of the day,” said Tammy, “I think about individuals.”
Hima Tamata, one of the girls She’s the First sponsors.
Tammy has taken on the reigns to lead a movement that plans on changing girls’ education one girl at a time. “For underprivileged girls, the impact of a sponsorship is life-changing,” said Tammy Tibbetts, and “what I know for sure is that education is where all opportunity begins.” She hopes that 10 years from now “when I think of She’s the First 13th birthday party, I will tell everyone that we’ve sponsored thousands of girls around the world and that we have hundreds of chapters around the U.S..”
Hear a little about girls’ education and social media from Tammy herself: