Our Voices

SOCIAL CHANGEMAKERS

Karleigh Patton

When volunteering, I find myself reflecting on the quote by Mother Teresa, “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” I’d like to say that I have created a lake of ripples all leading to positive change within my community. While I splash in the waters of making lasting changes for adults such as when I serve meals to homeless men at the Hope Rescue Mission or act as a youth voice on my school’s Equity Committee primarily consisting of teachers, administrators, and board members, I feel as though I have had the opportunities to make waves for the youth of my community and society. I feel as though I have defined aspects of my life through the act of helping others and learning to understand those around me and those different from me in order to provide equitable change as well as promote a more inclusive environment to highlight the unique voices that need to be heard, particularly by youth throughout my community and the nation.

Qianna Smith

Many new digital professionals are self-financed, don’t have access to legal aid, and have a lot of upfront creative production costs. The irony of this space is that you can be booked and broke. There’s also a lot of debt that no one talks about. Media depictions of influencers are often of the 1-2% of our trade. I turned a passion into a career that now spans nearly two decades. Startup industries like social media networking, influencer marketing, NFTs, crypto, etc. enable unparalleled innovation, entrepreneurship, and opportunities. But oftentimes, uncharted ecosystems dominated by young people can become hubs for wealth inequality, brand misconduct, and exploitation. Movements for transparency did not exist when I was blogging. I personally experienced all of the things that young, small businesses go through—like struggling to get your invoice paid on time or not knowing how to advocate for yourself because you’re super young. Apps like Clara and FYPM that curate brand insights and intel are recent phenomena. Competition for creators is fierce. At the American Influencer Council – AIC, we recognize that brands and platforms have a significant opportunity to build a pro-creator culture of trust through transparency. Career creators seek structures of transparency from the platforms, partnerships with brands that have a track record for inclusion and pay equity. This next generation of creators wants tools and resources to navigate this space more seamlessly, and that’s why we created the AIC Resource Hub and the Career Creator Club mentorship community. As more creators enter the market, our industry needs to be able to support them with trade resources and business development tools to scale and help educate them on how to be financially capable. It would be an honor to have the work I do for the Council recognized. The AIC is a grassroots association. The more awareness we can generate for our mission work, the better it can lead to opportunities to expand our programming.

Naomi Porter

Naomi Porter is a community builder who is committed to new experiences and connecting people with each other. Motivated by her passion for entrepreneurship and the diminished capacity of her education to meet this need, she founded EntrepreYOUership in 2019. Now, an international 501(c)3 non profit EntrepreYOUership works to remove financial and educational barriers and create space for young people from all backgrounds to participate in the field of entrepreneurship and financial literacy. She oversees a global team of over 200, whose average age is 16, working in 42 countries to implement their curriculum. Naomi’s work focuses on education reform and she has been noted as a catalyst in her field by Forbes, Wharton, Business Insider, Yahoo News, and Voyage LA Magazine. At the core of Naomi’s work is collaboration, empathy, and dedication to redefining how we educate youth. You can learn more about my work here: https://linktr.ee/naomiporter

Ariana White

Ariana is a leader in numerous places around Florida State University campus. She is a Resident Assistant in a freshman hall, she is a member of the Women's Student Union, a journalist for the HerCampus chapter and for the Panhellenic sororities at FSU, she is also the Director of Events and Public Relations for Leading Women of Tomorrow at FSU. No matter what her platform is or where she is on campus, Ariana is dedicated to Diversity Equity and Inclusion education. As an RA, she hosts monthly events surrounding intersectional identities, personal impact on the community, and more. She worked on the Social Justice committee for Housing in Summer 2021 where she curated a newsletter for surrounding residence halls. As a journalist, she writes articles about woman empowerment, highlights the Leading Women on campus, and showcases Women's History Month with the Women Student Union. As an executive board member of Leading Women of Tomorrow, Ariana helped create the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion position. Ariana developed the criteria for this new board member's role. Ariana helped judge the resumes for the applicants and helped train the new Director and come up with new series of events regarding Social Justice called LWTea. These events include but are not limited to: Intersectional Feminism, Microaggressions and Implicit Bias workshop, Black History Archives Tour, She/They/and other Pronoun's workshop, and more.

POLITICAL ACTIVISM