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Why LeadHER

School teaches academics.
We teach the rest.

LeadHER is a student-led program teaching middle school girls the things classrooms skip: how to speak up, how to lead, how to handle money, how to walk into a room and trust you belong there. It's built by high schoolers who just lived through it, for the girls about to.

By the time most girls realize how much speaking up, asking for money, and walking into a room matters, they've already decided they're not the type who does that. LeadHER catches them before that story sets and prepares them to be more than they're expected to be by teaching them under-emphasized life skills.

Built with care

Every workshop is shaped by what middle school girls actually face and not by what adults assume they need.

Skills that compound

Soft skills aren't extra. They're the multiplier. We teach the ones that pay dividends for the next 30 years.

Girls teaching girls

LeadHER is led by high schoolers who remember being 12. The gap is small, but the impact is big.

“I realized confidence isn't something you're born with; it's something you build every time you choose yourself.”

Maanvi, co-founder

Our Story

LeadHER started with a simple problem.

Why does middle school teach us the Pythagorean theorem but not how to ask for what we're worth? Why do we leave 8th grade knowing the periodic table by heart and not how to write a résumé, hold eye contact, or open a Roth IRA?

LeadHER fills that gap. We're high school students building short, sharp courses for the girls coming up behind us, the ones who deserve to walk into 9th grade already knowing how to use their voice.

That's it. No fluff, no theory. Just the skills that actually work.

Meet the founders

Built by two, for the girls behind us.

Maanvi Tyagi

Co-Founder/President of Technology & Strategy

Hi, I'm Maanvi! LeadHER started with one moment: freezing up in a middle school presentation, the words just gone, watching a grade I'd earned disappear with them. But it was happening every week in smaller ways too: ideas talked over in group projects, sentences I never got to finish. Once I started paying attention, I saw it everywhere. Friends apologizing before they spoke, classmates with mind-blowing ideas waiting for permission, girls our age treating speaking up like a privilege instead of a right. That's why I started this movement. No one teaches you how to hold a room, and the girls behind me shouldn't have to learn it the way I did. My goal is to give them the words, the practice, and the proof that their voices deserve a space in any room.

Disha Walia

Co-Founder/President of Innovation & Growth

Hi, I'm Disha! The idea for LeadHER came from a simple realization: confidence is key in shaping a girl's future. Too often, I have found myself holding back my ideas or staying silent because I am nervous to speak up. I am capable of getting an A in Math, but not asking someone for directions at the mall. Around me, I noticed the same with others. That's when I understood that my community will benefit from a space where girls can learn to use their voices, take initiative, and become independent, whether that be financially or in their daily lives. My goal is to shift away from making women robots and instead empower them to learn real-world skills and become the best versions of themselves going into the future.