If you go
What: Bold Summer: Leadership camp for high school girls
When: Aug. 7-11, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: New Vista High School, 700 20th St.
Cost: $549 (financial assistance may be available)
More info: and to register, visit bit.ly/2ky6rc3
Two female-led Boulder businesses are teaming up to create a leadership camp aimed at boosting the confidence of the city’s high school girls.
MergeLane, an accelerator for women-owned startups, will partner with Avid4 Adventure, which hosts outdoor camps for youth, to offer a one-time, one-week summer camp.
Days will be split in half, with mornings spent in the classroom at Galvanize and afternoons outside hiking, biking, climbing and kayaking.
“We’ve reached a couple hundred women in our leadership camps for adults,” said Sue Heilbronner, CEO of MergeLane. “I routinely hear from entrepreneurs, ‘I wish I had come to this earlier in my own life.'”
A study published last month by the journal Science found that girls’ confidence in their own intelligence and abilities starts to wain as early as age 6.
Mastering the outdoors can help restore some of that, according to Ileana Street, senior vice president of new business at Avid4 Adventure.
“Outdoor experiences can tap that ‘I can do it’ attitude when you face a situation that may look scary, difficult or impossible,” Street said. “The confidence comes from assessing the situation and realizing you know exactly what to do.
“That translates to all parts of life.”
Heilbronner said MergeLane’s training will focus on helping girls identify their strengths and “gaps” in skills in relationship to all facets of leadership, not just entrepreneurship.
“We want to give them tools for collaboration — How do I build teams? Who should I work with on this project? — and around self-presentation, which we call pitching: What’s the story of me and how can I tell that in a way that conveys my belief in myself?”
Just the one camp is planned so far, but if all goes well, both Heilbronner and Street said they’d like to increase both the frequency and range of the program.
“Our hope is it won’t be only in Boulder, but this is a great place to start,” Street said. “Where else can you work with top business leaders and top outdoor educators?”
Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/shayshinecastle
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
