Harvard senior Bernadette Lim named one of Glamour’s College Women of the Year
‘Every woman deserves to be counted’
Bernadette Lim ’16, co-founder and executive director of Women SPEAK and current Harvard senior, has just been named one of 2016’s College Women of the Year by Glamour.
Bernadette, a Human Evolutionary Biology concentrator, told the magazine:
“It started with a class assignment: Find a pressing social issue that women and girls face in Boston and try to solve it. But when I started researching, I came up empty-handed. The city had no comprehensive report on women and girls. Without this information nonprofits and government groups have no idea what to fund or which programs work. Over two years, with the help of 20 fellow students, I gathered that data. We uncovered alarming trends: For instance, 16 percent of Boston high school girls have considered suicide. The results were the first Report on the Status of Women and Girls in Boston. Always remember: If someone doubts you, maintain a childlike curiosity; it’ll get you through hard times.”
The prestigious award was presented to 10 of the most impressive college women across the States, including Daniela Fernandez, a clean ocean campaigner at Georgetown, Sasha DiGiulian, a pro rock climber at Columbia, and Sara Volz, a genome researcher at MIT.