V: Hello fellow Females of Filadelphia fans! Thank you for staying tuned to all these interviews! Today I have an amazing guest with me- I actually met her from a mutual friend. She is the kind of person you meet and think to yourself: this person is going to change the world. I know from many other people that you were very involved in politics last year, and you told me all about how you want to create an impact in the world. I could go on and on and say a bunch of things, but I think it is better if she explains it all to you! So, Amanda Morrison, why don’t you tell the readers about yourself, some of your experiences and what you hope your trajectory will look like in the future?
AMANDA: Sure, thanks for having me first of all. My name is Amanda and I am a junior here at Temple. I study global studies and strategic communication, and I have a double minor in Spanish and political science. I have a lot of diverse interests but the common theme through everything that I’ve pursued is politics, women’s empowerment, and public service, and that’s how I see my trajectory moving forward. And as far as past experiences that really inform what I study and what I hope to do- I did Speech and Debate in high school which was a great avenue and introduction to education and politics. I really learned how to see both sides of an issue. But I also experienced a lot of sexism in Speech and Debate; a lot of it was covert and a lot of undertones more so than people saying sexist things. But I definitely experienced sexism through people wanting me to have a male debate partner, instead of a female debate partner so that there weren’t two strong women in the room, and making comments about my performances or speeches, making sure I didn’t come off as strong. And so having those experiences really opened my eyes to the ways that sexism is very covert in our society and makes itself known through different avenues, not just sexist language. And those experiences really gave me a lot of passion for wanting to either work in politics or wanting to help other women work in politics. So I worked for a woman senator in the summer of 2017 after my freshman year, and that was a really great experience. It was actually for a woman senator of Missouri, which is where I am from. That was something I loved; my favorite thing about that was just seeing how a female senator went about her day and went about her life, and interacted with constituents. It was really powerful for me to see a woman of the same state with a similar background in a position of power. And that has really followed me through my other experiences. I studied abroad this summer and that gave me a greater global perspective on what I want to do in the future, as well.
V: Wow, that’s quite a resume you have there. I can already tell you’re going to be a great interviewer because of your background with public speaking. It’s sad the readers can’t hear you because you speak very fluently so hopefully I do a good job of portraying that. Regardless, you told me you wanted to move away from politics and into nonprofit work, tell me about that.
AMANDA: The first thing that comes to mind is that I was very fortunate to be able to travel to Tanzania in the summer of 2016 before I went to college. And I went with a business, but in my mind it’s more like a nonprofit, even though they do make profit. It’s called Askinosie chocolate. It’s a chocolate factory in my hometown of Springfield, Missouri. They take high school students every two years on a trip to meet the farmers where they source their beans. A lot of chocolate factories in the United States get their cocoa beans from third party businesses, but this chocolate factory goes every year to meet the farmers that produce all of their beans. So they go to Tanzania, the Philippines, Ecuador, and they also used to go to Honduras, but they don’t source from there anymore. So when I went to Tanzania, I was meeting with the farmers that were led by a female farmer. In the developing world, seeing female CEOs or female leaders of corporations is very rare. Going 4,000 miles across the world to a very rural place in Southwestern Tanzania just to meet a woman leader of a cocoa collaboration was so inspiring and motivational. It showed me that women have the power and potential to be leaders in anything- whether its business or politics or just a farm of cocoa beans. That was kind of my first introduction to women empowerment, and how businesses and nonprofits, and I say businesses lightly, really play a role in social justice and women’s empowerment. I knew from that moment on I wanted to advocate for women. And at first, I thought that since I loved politics so much, I would advocate for women in politics. I saw myself running for senate seats, city council and things like that. And I really enjoyed my position of working under a woman senator, and that position wasn’t what made me not want to work in politics. Actually going abroad made me want to not work in politics. I went to Amsterdam for a month this summer, and I wasn’t even studying politics or anything related to that arena at all. But just being abroad and listening to how people in other places talk about how the U.S government systematically disadvantaged and continues to disadvantage women, POC, immigrants, literally anyone who is not a white man, put it more into a perspective for me that I can have a greater influence of change in a different area of public service. And wanting to do nonprofits now doesn’t mean I don’t want to do politics later. I just don’t think that the political climate right now makes it possible for me to make as much change as I want to make. I think nonprofits are a great avenue to make a significant change with a group of people but also to make change one on one with people.
V: That is amazing. And the crazy part is that as time goes on we will only see more and more women with those leadership roles.Do you know where you see yourself taking your passion for nonprofits?
AMANDA: I honestly don’t. I did a fellowship for six weeks over the summer in Washington, D.C. and then I went to Missouri for six days before I got on a plane to Amsterdam. So it was a whirlwind summer, but what I learned from all of my experiences was that it’s better to have an open mind about possibilities for a career and professions and your work in the future, than to be set. So if this interview would have been months ago, I would have told you that I was going to law school. I was going to get a dual masters in public policy or education policy, probably in Missouri, at the University of Missouri, move back to my home community for a few years. And then as soon as I turned thirty, I would run for a U.S. Senate seat. And I was dead set on that three months ago. I would not have seen myself sitting here talking about nonprofit work. And so I am very grateful to my experiences this summer for opening my mind to other options. With that being said, I am definitely a planning type person; I have literally three planners. And I’m very organized and like to think about my future. But this summer really challenged me to not do that. Again, all that being said I have still thought through some options, so I’m looking at grad programs abroad, but potentially down the road. I think I’d really like to just move abroad after I graduate from my undergrad, and either work with Spanish speaking populations, because I speak Spanish, or move to Africa and go back to Tanzania and work with Swahili speaking populations because I want to work on my Swahili. Or move back to Amsterdam, because I lived there this summer. So there are really a lot of options, but I just know I want to go abroad and want to work with nonprofits. I haven’t quite figured out what that looks like yet, but hopefully something will just pop up that I like.
V: And that is very true. Things sometimes happen when we least expect them. There is nothing wrong with waiting what life brings you. Since you are not pursuing politics right now, how do you see women in politics in the future?
AMANDA: So I know it’s a little cheesy to say this, but I really think the future is female. Everything I have seen recently has shown that women are the future and they know that and are running. We are breaking records left and right, electing women for office from both sides of the aisle this year, and I am really excited for that. And I also have founded a non-profit, this summer, in my hometown. It’s called Missouri M.A.D.E, which stands for Molding A Diverse Electorate. And it’s all about getting more women to run for public office, especially younger women. And working with college or high school level women to prepare them for future runs, whether that’s at the local, state or federal level. So I am currently working to get things off the ground with that. I have been assembling my board of directors, and my executive team, which will be announced on October 1st, which I’m very excited about. We will get to do some pretty great work in Missouri and I know on the national level that there are so many great organizations working to train women to successfully run campaigns and run for office. As much as I wanted to see a female president in 2016, or we should have seen one years before, I know that it was a great push to remind women that there is still a lot of work to be done. I’m so thankful that we are already seeing women step up to the challenge and I hope that we can work even more to dismantle the sexist and patriarchal systems in society, to pave the way for more women- especially women who represent more marginalized societies. Thankfully, that is something we are seeing because we are about to have, hopefully the first black female governor of Georgia and we saw the first trans woman elected to the state legislature in Virginia last year. So we are breaking a lot of records, and we are seeing that not only in white women but in black women, for other women of color and for people who have different sexual and gender identities. And I hope this intersectionality will continue and hopefully build.
V: I think the future is female too and I’m excited to see how that looks. But wait, hold up, you started a nonprofit? We definitely can’t just lightly brush on that.
AMANDA: So this is another reason, I think, I realized I wanted to work in nonprofits. This idea came out of my fellowship. A component of my fellowship this summer in D.C., was to develop your own project that you want to implement in your campus or in your community. So I arrived at Mount Vernon with the idea to start an annual women’s Summit in Philadelphia, to work with college age women that wanted to run for office. And it just wasn’t really working. I would talk to people in the city or I would contact friends from college that I knew to try to get connections or just get a place to potentially hold this and potential dates and stuff, and I just wasn’t getting responses. And at first I was kind of pissed to be quite honest, and then I realized that the East Coast and the West Coast already have so many organizations. Or if they are national organizations working on getting women to run for office, they’re based in Philly, New York or D.C. And so I was talking to one of my friends about it and he gave me the idea to start this in Missouri. And that’s when it really clicked for me and I realized there is a huge need for getting more women elected to public office in Midwestern and Southern states. So, I decided to turn it into a 501(3)(C) nonprofit because that way I can get tax exempt donations, so I will be able to build more community relationships through businesses, corporations and other nonprofits. Our vision statement is to inspire and empower high school and college age women to run for office at local, state and federal levels. So, I’m really excited to work on that mission and so far have a very diverse group of people that want to work on this- from men to women to people of color to white people to people who are very religious to people who aren’t. It’s a very good mix of a lot of different people who are passionate about the same thing, and people from different political parties too. That’s another thing, and another reason why I wanted it to be a 501(3)(C), because by law they have to be non-partisan. I have very particular political beliefs that I voice very strongly to the people I care about, but I wanted to make sure that my organization was non-partisan and just based on the mission of getting more women to run for public office.
V: I think that is very true, it’s not about where you can come from, it’s more about what you fight for. If we are fighting for the same thing, why do we have to create rivalries, ya know? My question to you, though, is why do you do so much? What motivates you?
AMANDA: I have been very fortunate to have some amazing experiences, like doing a political internship that was unpaid, which a lot of people can’t afford to do. And I got to do a fellowship this summer that was pretty selective, but it was full of a lot of white people (fifteen of the sixteen were white). So while I’ve been thankful for the opportunities I’ve had, I’ve seen first hand a lot of the inequalities and discrimination that other people face. My experiences have been very eye opening to the systematic inequalities, and it’s made me more passionate about doing nonprofit work to advocate against that. But at the same time, I’m just a college student. And I’m very stressed about my school and I have a lot of reading to do tonight, and am just figuring everything out just like everyone else.
V: And it’s good that you use the upperhand you have to then help others that do not necessarily have the same opportunities. What’s some advice you have for those listening to this, either people that have the opportunities or not?
AMANDA: I would definitely say make friends with as many people from as many different cultures as possible, and read stories or watch videos to learn more about the world around you, that’s what you should do. Language, culture, where you live and religion all shape how you see the world. And that advice was not necessarily not given to me, but it was never explicitly stated. My parents always read to me and gave me opportunities to learn more about the world, but again, growing up in Springfield, Missouri, in the heart of the Bible belt, it’s very conservative and it’s very Christian, which is fine, but it’s not the world. Missouri is not the world and that worldview is not everyone’s. Springfield does not define Missouri and Missouri doesn’t define the United States. Learning about other cultures and other ways of life, and especially studying abroad this summer really opened my eyes to the plethora of world views there are. There are so many ways to see things. Then getting older and meeting people from other cultures has helped me develop empathy and that’s something I’d like to think I always had, but I’ve only expanded that. Having knowledge about other cultures and travelling and learning as much as you can about other parts of the world is just so informative and really heightens your experience.
V: You’re right though, everyone thinks his or her way is the right way to do something. And if you ever call people out on it, they still think their way is right. Okay, time for my most favorite question to ask- the fun, random question! What is something you like to do to de-stress?
AMANDA: So I can think of three. My first one is buying myself flowers; it’s one of my favorite things to do. I love sunflowers and I love roses, so whenever the Amish market is on campus or even if I’m in Rite Aid, I’ll buy myself flowers just to remind myself that I’m worth caring for. I also love flavored lemonades, so I’ll either make them or go buy raspberry lemonade or strawberry lemonade. And as far as actually de-stressing and not buying myself things to make me feel better, I like to do yoga and just go through various calming positions.
V: Yoga really is the hip thing to do these days, and I really should jump on that bandwagon. Regardless, thank you so much Amanda for this interview. I hope you inspire women around the world to work in the nonprofit sector, I think they’ll be surprised of how rewarded they’ll feel. Everyone make sure to go like the facebook page for Missouri M.A.D.E. and stay up to date with Amanda’s success. And make sure to stay up to date for the next interview (follow @femalesoffiladelphia); remember they are every Sunday #newstorysunday! Thanks for your time and go buy yourself some pretty flowers 🙂
Xoxo, V