As the CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA, I have the best job in the world because I get to travel across the country, talk about Girl Scouts all day, and tell everyone about all the awesome things girls are doing.
I also get to meet some incredible Girl Scouts—true go-getters, innovators, risk takers, and leaders—and see firsthand their G.I.R.L. spirit and ingenuity in action.
I recently met Ellie, an amazing Girl Scout from our California’s Central Coast council, when she came to visit GSUSA in New York, and wow did she impress me. A freshman in high school who has earned her Silver Award and is currently working on her Gold Award. Ellie told me about how she was trying to get a job, but she didn’t have any work experience yet and the job she was trying to get required a resume. So she decided to build her resume around all the skills she’d cultivated over the course of her ten years as a Girl Scout. That’s right—Girl Scouts enabled this G.I.R.L. to have a readymade resume. Talk about go-getting and innovating!
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In her resume, Ellie talked about how at Girl Scouts she learned effective leadership and communication skills, and that through the cookie program she built entrepreneurial and business skills while selling up to 500 boxes of cookies a year. She also listed her work as a Program Aide at a Girl Scout summer camp for three years, leading groups of kindergarten, first-, second-, and third-grade girls. And she detailed her Silver Award Take Action project, for which she organized and created “Barton Boxes” of art supplies that she donated to the Red Cross for children affected by the 2017 hurricane.
She got the job and has already been promoted!
I was so inspired by Ellie’s story, and it really drove home for me what Girl Scouts does for today’s girls—just as it did for me when I was a young Girl Scout.
Girl Scouts builds the complete girl, offering her activities and experiences that will ensure she can thrive in whatever path she chooses to pursue. Girl Scouts learn how to solve problems, they learn teamwork, they learn the power of collaboration. They learn how to identify and seize opportunities. How to be prepared so they can create their own luck. And how to persevere—to create a plan, to regroup when things go off-course, to learn from failure and try again.
It’s enterprising and ambitious Girl Scouts like Ellie who make me so excited and hopeful about the next generation of girls who will lead us into the future. We are in great hands.