As you well know by now, this week Worth held a three-day Women & Worth Virtual Summit, focusing on the importance of powering forward now more than ever. For these three days, we were joined by a team of bright and ambitious young women from Être, a program started by Illana Raia that offers mentorship to middle school- through college-aged girls and women and aims to inspire confidence in young women to stay true to what they really love.

Want to know how teenagers are handling COVID-19? Hear what these 5 young women from Être, a resource and mentorship platform for middle and high school girls, have to say about what they’re worried about, how they’ve spent the last six months, and what they’ve learned about themselves. Here's what teenagers want you to know about what they're doing.

“More than that, she didn’t know what any of my friends did, and they had some of the coolest jobs ever! Surgeons, CEOs, writers and Wall Street wizards – she didn’t see them in their element,” says Raia. “So when she was in middle school I started taking her to see where they worked, and she loved it. The whole time we were doing this, I kept thinking girls everywhere should be doing this.”

Adrienne’s guest is Illana Raia, the CEO and founder of the organization Être Girls - a mentorship program and platform that connects professional women with school age girls. Her work helping and mentoring middle school and high school girls is both incredible and inspiring, as is Illana Raia! Her work connecting female mentors in large and small corporations all around the country with girls gives them an amazing opportunity to ask questions, to learn about certain professions, and to seek out role models so that they can become exactly who they want to be.

Increasingly, women executives are realizing that it’s not enough to just make it to the C-suite – indeed, they’re also compelled to save seats for young women to follow in their footsteps.

As a corporate lawyer in New York City, Illana Raia began taking her middle school daughter to lunch with some of her accomplished female friends (executives, surgeons, news anchors, etc.) so she could see what their jobs were really like and ask candid questions. Immediately, she could sense the power in that simple interaction – her daughter’s sense of self was reinforced by seeing such strong, accomplished women (and the women likely felt a charge of inspiration as well). Around the same time she became aware of alarming confidence gap statistics that found that between the ages of 8-14 girls’ confidence levels drop by a whopping 30%.

Être, when we were only 6 weeks old, participating in the HuffPost #TalkToMe video series! Board members ask Être founder about motivation, making a difference and why mentors matter...as early as middle school.

Illana Raia is the founder of Être Girls. ‘Who exactly do you want to be?’ – Être Girls, a knowledge strategy and a resource and mentorship platform for girls approaching high school. Do your children know much about your career? Do they think of you as the cook, driver, cleaner, supplier of your clothes and other various items? When Illana realized that her daughter had no clear idea of what she actually did or that the women who she was around were accomplished women in their own right, Illana decided she wanted to change that. Illana was determined to make sure that young girls knew that there are many options to choose from. And so, the beginnings of Être Girls.

Raise your hand. Don't lower your standards. That's the message from this week's guest Illana Raia, an attorney who left the profession to start her own company that aims to inspire middle school girls to stick with their creative passions and transform them into careers in the future.

Each week, an accomplished published author takes over the YEM Twitter account for Thursday’s Twitter Takeover. Each week, the YA author will answer questions, tell stories, and give advice on our social media. This week author Illana Raia will be taking over our Twitter account.