Built by Women

*Pictured above are Aubrey Cox Ottenstein, Midori Grabowski, and Stephanie Kaplan Lewis

Women’s History Month is usually a time for looking back, the firsts, the milestones, the women who broke through walls that should never have existed in the first place. While that matters, this year, we wanted to look at right now.

The women we are spotlighting this month are not in the history books yet. They are in the middle of building something, a civic tech platform, a media empire, a youth organizing movement, and we think that deserves just as much attention as the retrospective. These are the women in our orbit, and we are proud to put a spotlight on them.

The Women Building It

Midori Grabowski | CEO, TOGETHER! | Senior Director of Operations, Voters of Tomorrow

Midori Grabowski does not run one organization: she runs two.

As CEO of TOGETHER! and Senior Director of Operations at Voters of Tomorrow, Midori has spent her career building the connective tissue between young people and the political structures that shape their lives. She has produced landmark AAPI civic and cultural events, including an event at the Kennedy Center featuring Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and an event at The Second City featuring then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Her work has been recognized in Teen Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and on President Obama’s social platforms. But what drives her is not the recognition. It is the belief that young people, given the right infrastructure and the right invitation, will show up.

She is not waiting for the civic engagement movement to find its footing. She is one of the people building it.

Aubrey Cox Ottenstein | Co-Founder, Hilltop | Co-Founder & CEO, Globally

Aubrey Cox Ottenstein spent years working on Capitol Hill watching the same problem play out over and over: constituents had opinions, lawmakers needed to hear them, and the gap between those two things was enormous.

So she built a bridge.

In April 2024, she co-founded Hilltop, a civic technology company building the infrastructure for verified constituents to deliver personalized messages directly to lawmakers, while generating real-time insight into public sentiment and priorities. The platform, CivIQ, is already in use by organizations across the country including TOGETHER! itself.

The premise is simple and radical at the same time: what if contacting your representative was as easy as sending a text? What if lawmakers actually knew, in real time, what the people they serve are thinking? Aubrey is building the answer.

She saw the gap between citizens and their representatives and decided to close it herself.

Stephanie Kaplan Lewis | Co-Founder & CEO, Her Campus Media

In 2009, Stephanie Kaplan Lewis and two Harvard classmates started a media company for college women. Sixteen years later, Her Campus Media is the number one media and marketing platform for college women in the country.

What Stephanie built is not just a publication, it is an ecosystem. Her Campus gives young women a platform to write, lead, and be heard at a moment in their lives when most institutions are still figuring out whether to take them seriously.

She has been named to Forbes’s 30 Under 30 lists and Glamour’s 20 Amazing Young Women. More importantly, she built something that outlasted the listicles, scaled past the skeptics, and now reaches millions of young women every year.

She built the platform she wished had existed, and then she made sure millions of other women had access to it too.

Why This Matters

Civic infrastructure is not glamorous work and it does not trend. The people building it rarely get the credit they deserve while they are in the middle of doing it, and by the time everyone else catches up, the foundation has already been poured.

That is exactly why we wanted to write this piece.

Women’s History Month is a time to honor the women who came before, and it is also a time to name the women doing the work today, while they are doing it. So that the next generation knows who built what they inherited. We see these women, we are grateful for them, and we are really proud to be in their orbit.

TOGETHER! Takeaway

Change holds when it is built by people who believe it will last. These women believe that. We do too.

What Is Next?

• Act: Contact your representatives through TOGETHER!’s CivIQ campaign and put Aubrey’s infrastructure to work.

• Read: Her Campus Media, the platform Stephanie built, and the millions of young women writing on it.

• Join: Become a TOGETHER! Experience member and be part of the community Midori is building.

Here is to the women building what comes next.

— The TOGETHER! Team

P.S. For our readers in D.C., we’re publishing a biweekly TOGETHER! DC edition focused on the crossroads of policy, culture, and youth power. Get the latest on upcoming events, local collaborations, and spotlights on young changemakers in the District.

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