Tracy Keller has been an ambassador of girl leadership since her teen years in Girl Scouts. There, she earned the highest award a girl can earn in Girl Scouts, the Gold Award, where she created and carried out an educational program for students in elementary school on the prevention of tobacco use. Now, more than thirty years later and CEO of the Girl Scouts of the Colonial Coast since 2005, she continues to facilitate conversations that empower girls and women, and helps shape programs within the community.
Over the past year, she took on the challenge of volunteering as the lead of the Empowering Girls initiative for the Rotary District 7600, a district that has joined other Rotary clubs and districts internationally to embrace this key initiative that focuses on improving the health, education, well-being, and economic security of girls.
“Empowering girls means supporting them to ensure that their basic needs are met while working to transform the structures and institutions that reinforce and perpetuate gender discrimination and inequality,” Keller said. “This initiative fits so well with Girl Scouts’ mission which is to help build girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place. It is important that we empower girls, because when girls succeed, society succeeds.”
(This is an excerpt; to read the full feature story from the Hampton Roads Chamber, please visit hrchamber.com.)
