At girledworld we get a little bit excited about innovation, ignition of ideas and problem solving. It’s why we train in and keep a hand on Design Thinking, Lean Startup, agile and anything that keeps us moving, questioning, pivoting and coming up with awesome ideas to solve the wicked problems of the world.

So we’re super excited to have education consultant and design thinking facilitator Kirsty Costa from Cool Australia joining us for the girledworld Big Ideas Leadership Summit 2017 to get hundreds of secondary school aged girls immersed in a Design Thinking workshop on Saturday June 24!

Design thinking helps us create, analyse and rebuild products and ideas. It can also be used to find creative solutions to big problems, and in this experiential workshop, participants will experience and apply each step of design thinking – from immersion to prototyping – as they work in teams to solve a live world environmental problem: the shrinking habitat of marine turtles and how Design Thinking can be used to create a prototype solution to protect their endangered nests.

Costa started out as a primary teacher, became an award-winning education consultant and now is the Head of Professional Development at Cool Australia, enabling more than 65,000 teachers to connect their lessons to the world outside the classroom every day.

Costa was awarded the 2013 Victorian Environmental and Sustainability Educator of the Year and trained by Al Gore as a Climate Reality Leader in 2014. In recent years she has helped hundreds of organisations and individuals carry out exciting change projects across Australia, and worked on global environmental initiatives with Greenpeace Japan and Oxfam Community Aid Abroad.

We can’t wait for Kirsty Costa to bring her expertise, energy, turtles and big thinking to the girledworld Big Ideas Leadership Summit 2017.

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Please join us alongside some of Australia and the world's most remarkable business leaders, startup founders and STEM champions to up-skill the next generation of girls in leadership, innovation and enterprise.

girledworld Big Ideas Leadership SUMMIT 2017.

Saturday June 24 & Sunday June 25

University of Melbourne @unimelb

Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship @wadeinstitute

#stepup #startup #STEM

TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

I feel it’s important that from the outset, I highlight that this is an article about Arianna Huffington and NOT Ariana Grande.

This distinctive first name is known by young girls and teenagers today as an uber slim and overly glamorous pop-star, Ariana Grande. You would have heard her catchy tunes on Spotify playlists, the radio and whenever you're out and about in shops and cafes.

Is this Ariana a role model for the next generation of empowered females…? Hmm probably not. Especially not when you catch a glimpse of her overly sexual and suggestive lyrics. But I’ll stop myself before I go down the path of critiquing the state of female pop culture.

There is, however, another Arian(n)a who is an incredible role model! You've probably heard of her...

Huffington Post is one of the world’s most visited website for news, politics, sport, entertainment and wellness information. Launching online in 2005, the site sold to AOL in 2011 for a reported $300million.

For those of us who love reading Huffington Post, well, we’ve discovered even more reasons to love it’s inspirational co-founder Arianna Huffington.

Here are some of our favourite Huffington highlights:

She’s super smart. Moving away from her hometown Athens, Greece, Huffington moved to the UK in her late teens to study an M.A. in Economics at Cambridge University. When she arrived at Cambridge, she struggled with English and subsequently joined the debating society to improve her accent and speaking skills. Whoever said debating wasn’t cool?!
She’s all for more girls in STEAM pathways. Huffington highlights a number of important points in the current STEM discussion. She suggests that STEM should include Arts (to become STEAM) as arts (particularly for children) promotes creative thinking and problem solving. Without arts, we’re drowning in data and are starved of vision and wisdom. To read more from Huffington on this topic, click here.
She’s all about sleep. In Huffington’s latest book, The Sleep Revolution: Changing Your Life, One Night at a Time, she’s preaching sleep and rest. Huffington claims that we are in a sleep deprivation crisis which has profound consequences – on our health, our job performance, our relationships and our happiness. A timely reminder to sleep and get some rest this silly season.
She’s a Pulitzer Prize winner. In 2012, Huffington won a Pulitzer Prizes for National Reporting and has written 15 books to date.
She bucks the trend. Tech and media companies are still dominated by male owners and executives. Huffington is a shining example that it is possible for women to succeed in these industries. However, stories of female success, like Huffington are still too few and far between.

At girledworld, we champion female role models from all backgrounds. We want to ensure that female role models are visible to our younger generation. If you have any feature suggestions, we’d LOVE to hear from you. Drop us an email: hello@girledworld.com

girledworld - building the next generation of female leaders, founders and STEM champions.