It’s easier than asking someone to be your valentine – I promise.

Asking someone to be my mentor might sound like the most daunting sentence in…ever, but it doesn’t have to be. And during a week full of candy and flowers, focusing on careers and futures may well be the gift that lasts longer.

How do I even start? As the founder of Être, a girls’ mentorship platform, I hear this question a lot. Closely followed by what exactly should I say and am I too young to ask? Most of the time, as they are spinning in boardroom chairs at companies they voted to visit when they ask, I defer to the women hosting us for answers.

We’re already on our feet cheering.

With National Women & Girls in Sports Day hitting the field this Wednesday, a first-of-its-kind WNBA-NBA competition coming to the paint ten days later, attendance at women’s events reaching record-breaking levels, and the Women’s Sports Foundation turning 50 this spring, 2024 is proving to be game-changing for girls watching sports.

Oh, and there’s a football game on Sunday promising even more rockstar action.

What exactly are girls seeing and why does it matter?

Girls are seeing a groundswell of mentor moments in the form of players, coaches, general managers, and leagues who are working toward their future in sports.

As innovative ideas burst forth in a new year and National Mentoring Month winds to a close, I can’t help but reflect on a group of extraordinary pitches I witnessed at the Girls Into VC Summit at Harvard University last quarter. Speaking on one of the panels and then happily seated in the audience enthralled by undergraduates, surgery fellows, artists and TechStar fellows pitching ideas to a panel of venture capital judges, I was blown away by their expertise and, well…their fearlessness.

It was something to behold.

Because pitching is hard and can be more daunting for young women.

On the heels of our list of 20 Women in AI That Girls Should Know that generated so much interest names are still being highlighted in the comments, and with boots arriving on the ground for NY Fashion Week 2024, we felt another role model list coming on.

Because whether eyeing fashion from afar or chatting directly with industry mentors (hat tip to Emilie Rubinfeld, President of Carolina Herrera, who met with a Club Être chapter just last week), girls are raising their hands with questions: If women do more of the designing in fashion, why aren’t they running more of the companies?

They’re not wrong. According to Forbes, even though women design approximately 40% of womenswear brands, they hold only 14% of leadership positions in the largest fashion companies. Moreover, they lead less than 13% of Fortune 1000 Retail & Apparel companies.

Can female founders in fashion fix it?

You bet.

“It's a privilege and an inspiration to share this space with individuals who have dedicated their lives to serving others, and hopefully I’ll make even a fraction of the impact that the fellow awardees have.”

So stated Gitanjali Rao two nights ago to a rapt audience and her words still ring in my ear this morning.

Honoring global individuals and organizations that exemplify “excellence in leadership, pursuit of social justice, and commitment to creating the Beloved Community in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King,” the 2024 Beloved Community Awards were joyfully celebrated on Saturday, in anticipation of Martin Luther King Jr Day.

Did you see the New York Times list of leaders in artificial intelligence (AI) that featured twelve men…and zero women? We did too.

What’s more, girls heard about it and immediately raised their hands with questions:

Um, where are the women?

No way only men are running the show in AI.

So…did AI actually make this list?

Because while other lists have been more comprehensive, the lack of women’s names on the NYT list was stunning. And potentially career-stunting for women and girls.

There is nothing like the first day of a calendar. Like a blank page laid invitingly before us, it marks the starting line of the year. The crackle of fire before we feel the heat. Flawless icing before the first bite.

Because you know that moments of joy await. Arianna Huffington, a role model of mine whose advice in Être: Girls, Who Do You Want to Be still gives me goosebumps, wrote yesterday about looking back on moments of wonder and awe, and it made me think about the mentor moments I hope to see for the next generation in the coming year.

Here are 12 that spring to mind.

In the last week of 2023, it’s exciting to look back at all the firsts. From awards won to women making news, in navy hats and baseball caps, and while running companies and readying themselves to walk on the moon, women in 2023 showed girls how to be first.

Let's start out with an asterisk: Yes, Lessons in Chemistry hit shelves in 2022, not 2023. But then Apple TV brought the story to the screen in 2023 and gave girls a brand new STEM hero to watch. I'm including it on this list because when Être girls asked author Bonnie Garmus what her main character, Elizabeth Zott, would tell curious girls today, her answer made my entire year. More about that at the end.

But this is a Top Ten List, so let's start at the top - here are ten books by epic women that illuminated and empowered our 2023.

A good year-end report allows an organization to look back on its achievements, evaluate strategy strength, document what was learned and measure goal-oriented growth. A great year-end report reveals the numbers and brings us behind the scenes to show the moments behind the metrics. Taking stock of who we were in ‘23 and who we want to be in ‘24.

Être, a mentorship platform I started with joy in 2016, had its biggest year yet - with moments that surprised our mentors, stunned our girls, and brought me to tears in the middle of Times Square.

It’s not partridges and pear trees I think of as we enter December. Never mind the calling birds and geese…the lords and the leaping. The drumbeat I hear as I look back on 2023 has one ringing refrain: mentors. Mentors matter.

Because throughout this year we watched as mentor moments won the gold, made the news, met the next generation and tipped their hats to first sources of inspo. Mentor moments were key in ’23 – here are 12 from our Insta that made our year at Être.

Why do you want to be a TED-Ed speaker?

I see an injustice that needs righting.

I know a problem that needs solving.

I heard an idea that needs exploring.

I have a voice that needs raising.

Comments I heard back in April when Être’s third year as a TedEd Club got underway. Our inaugural season was 2021 when, in response to COVID shutdowns that halted our boardroom visits, I looked to augment the sudden loss of middle and high school extracurriculars and searched for a fresh way for girls to dive deeply into areas of interest from their homes.

Last week leaders in science and engineering gathered in Washington, DC for the 2023 American Society for Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR) Conference, and the next generation was watching.

Meet Isabella Mandis, the Harvard sophomore empowering the next generation of female venture capitalists.

Then meet the community of 200+ women and allies who gathered in Cambridge, Massachusetts yesterday to envision a more inclusive venture capital and startup landscape.

With Veteran’s Day coming up this week, our heads turn to honoring those who have served our country to secure and preserve peace. And with 16.2M veterans in the United States as of last year, representing 6.2% of the total civilian population aged 18 and over, our gratitude extends far and wide.

It extends, in fact, to the families of these veterans and, in my case, to the children. In addition to missing their parents during deployments and experiencing the trauma of a wounded or deceased parent, military kids face challenges unique to their circumstances and often hard for the rest of us to understand.

In Être’s third season as a licensed TED-Ed Club, I am watching a stellar class of girls take the mic. Their ideas couldn’t be bigger, and I could not be more proud. Throughout the year I get a lot of questions about the TED-Ed program, and as we get to filming week and our attention centers on the stories being shared, inquiries rise to a fever pitch.

While we wait to upload our talks to TED-Ed, here are a few answers to frequently-asked questions and a teaser as to the mentors advising our students this year. All of it will blow your mind.

A soap that treats skin cancer.

A patch that delivers medicine without pills or needles.

A glove that detects seizures and tracks them through a phone app.

All ground-breaking discoveries recently announced by 3M.

All developed by middle school scientists with mentors.

One of the reasons I love writing about the 3M Young Scientist Challenge every year is the mentorship aspect that inspires and empowers America’s Top Young Scientists. Now in its sixteenth year, the Young Scientist Challenge reaches deep into middle schools across the U.S. to pull novel STEM-based solutions to modern problems into brighter light.

On Day of the Girl 2023 Être was invited into the room at the UN, and a lot happened.

We actually found ourselves in a number of rooms – each one showcasing women in power.

Women of influence.

Women with impact.

And it felt good.

Because during a week of unspeakable horror, when helplessness and fear streamed through our feeds, women holding seats for us in rooms of action gave Day of the Girl extra purpose and meaning. It was the right trip at exactly the right time.

As the eyes of the world are on Israel and the Middle East today, and top UN officials continue to meet behind closed doors, Être girls are readying themselves to spend this Wednesday, International Day of the Girl, in the same corridors at the United Nations.

Day of the Girl 2023 is particularly meaningful for us, not only because it marks the fourth anniversary of our first book Être: Girls, Who Do You Want To Be, the first anniversary of our national study on girls’ confidence, and the kick-off to a highly-anticipated series of quarterly visits for middle and high-school girls at the UN, but because Être girls have already been raising their voices in this hall.

“I’ve, like, never played poker before. What if I don’t get any good cards?”

“My brother said he would teach me, but I definitely think I’d rather learn from women who play all the time. I can make all my mistakes here.”

Overheard last week as NYC girls in their teens and early twenties pulled up chairs to poker tables at Gotham Hall.

“I thought I wouldn’t win…but then I thought I would just try to raise [the bid] anyway…and I won! It was so surprising and I felt so powerful.”