meet our staff
Laura Peña
Founder
Laura Peña, a filmmaker, creative producer, storyteller, entrepreneur, motion designer & animator. Originally from the Dominican Republic, Laura has been in the USA for almost 14 years.
She is traveling around the world collecting the stories from teenage girls of all shapes, sizes, colors, and cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.
Sara Surani
co-founder
Sara Surani is a Pakistani-American who loves listening and learning about stories of people from all over the world. She loves working with youth to find beauty and power in their own stories and to using that power to create an impact in their communities.
Sara graduated from Harvard University and is also the is a co-founder of a health education program in South Texas focused on educating over 20,000 young children about healthy living. For the past few years Sara has been working in remote communities in the Amazon jungle and helping start the first public holistic education school in Peru.
She is also a Fulbright Fellow, Schwarzman Scholar, and Rotarian (Paul Harris Fellow.)
Laura Rose
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Larissa Moreira
Intern
Changing the world through sustainability, Larissa has developed different initiatives and was even a Finalist for the Prudential Community Spirit Award for her work in including students with visual impairments in her school. In addition, Larissa promotes the personal and professional development of women in minority groups through workshops on organization, leadership and teamwork. She believes that to really change the world, our fight cannot be solo, we need to work together with respect and empathy. Her impact work has reached more than 700 people through Instagram and volunteer work.
Paola Palacios
Intern
Paola Palacios is a 17 years old Venezuelan living in Chile, migrant, passionate about science, conversations, education, and equality. She loves meeting people from all over the world and promoting the importance of the female role. A great dream of Paola is to travel to different parts of the world and contribute either with scientific knowledge or by building cultural bridges across nations.
Maria Julia
Intern
My name is Maria Julia Vale, and I am a dreamer. Some people think it's crazy to believe in a change nowadays in the world, but it only takes one light to shine to end the darkness. Therefore, I am really interested in civic engagement. I believe in the power of empowering other people to take action to change their community. This goal had led to the foundation of my own project, Speak Up, and integration in many more. In them, I learned how to use social media, organizational platforms, and data analysis to grow and impact more realities.
Our interns are girls from our community. We partnered with LALA (have link here) and their intern programs (something more about this partnership). Currently, we are working with girls from Latin America. These girls come from different countries around the world. In the past, we have worked with girls from the Dominican Republic and Australia.
Galaxy leadership team
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Get involved!
Most people on this list are kindly donating their time and knowledge to make this beautiful thing happen! They are using their voice to bring more voices of girls to more people. If you feel called to support She is the Universe, we are always looking for people to help in many different capacities.
Thank you!!!
“I stand on the sacrifices of a million women before me thinking what can I do to make this mountain taller so the women after me can see farther”