Emily Leys inspires women to simplify their own lives to help others.

Emily Leys is the head of the Girls’ Education Program at Room to Read, based in San Francisco. Room to Read established our Girls’ Education program in 2000 to motivate, educate and empower girls by providing the support they need to enroll and remain in school. The program identifies girls at risk of dropping out of school and ensures that they have the opportunity to complete secondary school.

ZENPLIFICATION:
Can you describe a moment of metamorphosis for you?

ZENPLIFICATION:
I think that I definitely have some kind of an awareness or metamorphosis in Cape Town, when I was living in South Africa for three years doing my masters degree at the University of Cape Town. So while working on my thesis, I was also volunteering for a couple of different things. One was a youth program, which I found really fulfilling, and the other was at the Red Crisis Center in Cape Town. And I remember there was this one opportunity where Red Crisis needed to hire someone to co-ordinate this, believe it or not, puppet show about sexual abuse that was going to go out into the townships. An accessible, local art form of getting information across in a hopefully accessible and non-threatening way to kids. They hired me at Red Crisis for this short coordination gig and I remember just feeling so successful. I was doing a really good job. And they were so impressed and pleased with what I was doing because it was a last minute thing but I just came in and I organized everything and got it all together. That was when I realized that I might be a co-ordinate project manager at heart. So I think functionally that was I would like to do, and I would like to apply that to volunteering to non-profit organizations or organizations I think are doing good to the world. So I think I sort of had a ah-ha moment there.

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