Cherie Animashaun speaking at the 2025 SXSW. (All rights reserved to owner)
Cherie Animashaun is the founder of Her Rising Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering young women and closing opportunity gaps through leadership programs, mentorship, and education. A published author since age 12, Cherie launched Her Rising at 16 and has since organized statewide “Girls Who Lead” conferences, awarded scholarships, and created youth-led chapters across the U.S. and abroad. Now a public policy student at Cornell University, she continues to advocate for equity and representation, bringing a powerful voice to spaces like the White House Youth Policy Summit and SXSW EDU.
Your journey is unique as you are a student founder. How did the idea of “HER Rising Initiative” begin and how did you overcome the challenge of balancing school, service and growing into yourself?
CA: It was 2021, following the Black Lives Matter movement. People were taking to the streets and everyone I knew was going through it. I was always the therapist friend growing up and during the pandemic everyone was reaching out to me asking for advice. They were all going through something, whether that be family, mental health, depression, relationships and I just found myself constantly giving advice. It was starting to drain me, so I asked myself how can I take everything that I've been saying and everything that I've seen prove useful and just put it in one area so I can distribute it at a better scale. The first thing that came to mind as a writer was to make a book, so that's really how HER Rising actually started, which I don't think many people know about. I started selling them at pop-up shops wherever I could find and I took all the proceeds and put it towards HER Rising. Once we got the name going, one of the biggest things I love to do is make events and that's something I always tell founders, like do what you love, you don't need to change it up. I love making events so I knew with HER Rising, we were going to start there.
I would say Google Calendar is your best bet for balance. I think one of the biggest challenges for me is when you're so passionate about something, the passions conflict a lot. I think being a student founder is really unique and it can be challenging, but I also think it's really fun. Like you get to travel all the time, you get to meet new people all the time.I just can't imagine going through the rigor of college without having something that is actually fulfilling on the side.
The impact of a Girls Who Lead event. (Rights reserved to owner)
At SXSW you spoke about making sure girls feel fit to lead, that hit home. How are you currently creating opportunities where young people see themselves as leaders?
CA: One of the biggest things I remember in high school, we did a project and I chose to look at representation in different industries. I was looking at who holds leadership and I was shocked when I looked at people who were running all the companies making movies. For example, all I saw were men, white men at the top. Reading all the executive boards, even though people of color that we know are the actors, they're not the ones that are pulling the string. When I looked at government, I saw the same pictures. When I looked at engineering, when I looked at medicine, computer science, it was all the same pictures. And I think that really frustrated and shocked me when I was in high school. So one day I was just playing around on Canva and I came up with the idea of “Girls Who Lead”, and I made this cute little design. In line with my love for event planning, we made this Girls Who Lead conference in the state of Illinois. It's completely free to girls because I realized that growing up I couldn't do many different opportunities because there was a fee attached to it. So we made the conference completely free. If you want to do a workshop in fashion, business, and theater, you can do that. If you want to do workshops in engineering and culinary, you can do that. The girls got to choose three workshops for the day and they come in for free and I bring in women who have been doing this forever. It's kind of closing the opportunity gap and I think it's doing it in a much more fun way than a traditional classroom. So girls who are interested in engineering legit get to build with like a Northwestern engineer in Illinois.
“A lot of people will tell you that they get on social media and it harms their mental health, but you actually have the agency and power to create a social media algorithm and resource where when you open up these apps, you're gaining inspiration or you're gaining tips.”
- Cherie Animashaun
You’re building something big and part of that has been choosing to surround yourself (even online) with people whose work pushes you forward. How has digital curation through your method of auditing helped you pour back into yourself as a leader?
CA: I always tell people if you're trying to build something or you just want to know how to start. I think the biggest thing I did when I was younger in high school and I had an idea, but I had no way of going about it, was creating this kind of digital ecosystem. A lot of people will tell you that they get on social media and it harms their mental health, but you actually have the agency and power to create a social media algorithm and resource where when you open up these apps, you're gaining inspiration or you're gaining tips. I think for me, I've kind of mastered that and I did it unintentionally. There's a lot of mistakes I don't have to make if I just watch someone who's doing the same work. You're getting advice that you don't even have to pay for. I think there's this power that we do have in social media and it can either be a weapon or it could be a really powerful tool where if you're following people that inspire you, following people who are far ahead of you. I think it's huge for networking, it's huge for mental health, confidence and I think it can really help. There's a lot of power in that and I wish every person my age would do that.
The HER Rising Initiative (All rights reserved to owner)
What stands out to you about how Gen-Z is leading right now, and how do you think it’s going to influence the future in a meaningful way? What can other generations learn?
CA: Our generation is so unique in so many different ways. I think one of the biggest things that I've seen is we have influence in a different way and we're able to connect on a whole other magnitude, which no other generation has ever done it. When I meet with older women who are really experienced, I'm very confident I can just go on TikTok and record something and I'll be fine. I know that I can reach the people I need to reach, whereas they're thinking, “Oh I need to have $2,000 in capital to start marketing.” Whereas we're able to reach people for free in a matter of hours, in a matter of minutes. Something that our generation is really good with is setting a boundary. If we don't want to do something, we're not doing it and I do think having that ability to put our foot down and say no is going to be huge. When it comes to the future, I think a lot of people can kind of get carried away by people pleasing or fame and a dollar sign. And I think our generation is really good at “If this makes me feel bad, I'm not doing it, if my heart's not in it, I don't want to do it.” I think having that kind of backbone to say no and then having the creativity to find a new way, I think we're really good at making our own path. That's something really nice that I'm really proud of my generation.
What role does representation play in helping the next generation believe that their dreams and aspirations are truly possible?
CA: You can't become something you've never seen and I think there's just so much power in seeing someone who is doing something especially from your neighborhood or from your city, from your state, from your culture, from your background. I saw this quote, “When you're your full self and you show up to these rooms as your full self, you give somebody else permission to do the same.” I mean, that's huge. In high school, I had a boss and she was amazing. She was a black woman and she ran the place and this was a predominantly white high school district. I got to meet with her once a week and she's a Delta, like she was so fully herself. She had full-blown pieces of art with black women doing they thing and she was her full self every single day. Her outfits iconic and she didn't code switch anything, but she was still getting stuff done. She was fully capable, intelligent, super smart, but she was her full self. One of the biggest things she was trying to teach me was, “Cherie, you're great. You're intelligent, you're going to go far.” But she's like, “I don't want you to lose yourself though.” It's really easy to get to these places, go to an Ivy League or go to a top HBCU, but then you lose yourself in the process. She nailed that in my head, all her quotes still come to mind. So I think representation is so powerful in that sense.
Want to hear more amazing stories like this? Check out our “More of Us” series! If you want to connect with Cherie and support the work she is doing, follow her on social @cheriii.a and @her.risingg, support her business at The HER Rising Initiative.