Her Climb is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and a free multi-year leadership and college access program for high school girls from underserved communities.
Her Climb at a glance
Her Climb, Inc. is a free, multi-year leadership and college access program for public high school girls from underserved communities across New York City. Scholars join in their freshman year of high school, and Her Climb stays with them until age 25.
Four pillars: leadership, access, wellness, and sisterhood. Four career tracks: business, journalism, STEM, and creative arts.
- Cohort 1: 15 scholars from public high schools across New York City (16 completed Summer Intensive I)
- Summer Intensive I, July 6–24, 2026: 100% survey response, 4.6 out of 5 overall rating, 94% reported a positive emotional shift
- Year-round programming: 15 on-campus Saturdays, 1:00–5:00 PM, September through May
- PSAT prep, college access programming, and College Hack Week (Aug. 9–13, 2027)
- Summer Intensive II: July 12–30, 2027
- The Juilliard School
- Stanford University's VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab
- USTA Foundation (official NJTL chapter)
- Teach For America New York
- Child Mind Institute
- The Barrow Group
- Rula
- An original animated short film written from our scholars' own words
- A financial literacy app for our scholars
Her Climb and its founder have been featured in Forbes, ELLE, and CNN.
Led by a founder and executive director, a board of directors, a part-time program assistant, and a team of volunteer leaders in college access, school partnerships, storytelling, and program design.
A multi-year leadership pathway
Her Climb is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit expanding opportunity for high school girls from underserved communities through a multi-year leadership pathway that begins in high school and continues through college and early career.
The program combines leadership development, wellness support, mentorship, and direct exposure to industries that shape culture, capital, and public narrative.
Students begin with a Summer Intensive held on Columbia University’s campus and continue with year-round programming designed to strengthen confidence, build professional networks, and develop the skills needed to navigate competitive academic and professional spaces.
The organization’s long-term model ensures students do not simply participate in isolated programs. They grow within a sustained cohort and leadership pathway that prepares them to enter college and professional environments confident, connected, and ready to lead.
Her Climb is an independent nonprofit organization that collaborates with Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, whose support has included workshops, campus tours, and career and admissions counseling for our scholars.
Her Climb serves girls with talent, ambition, and drive who often lack access to the networks, mentorship, and industry exposure that shape opportunity.
Her Climb is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to expanding opportunity for young women from underserved communities. We provide a free, multi-year leadership pathway that combines academic preparation, cultural fluency, civic engagement, and industry-specific career exposure.
Our mission is to ensure girls arrive at college and beyond confident, connected, prepared to participate, and to lead in their communities, professions, and civic life.
Adolescent girls are navigating a moment of extraordinary pressure and possibility.
of high school girls felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2025, compared with 23.9% of boys.
of high school girls seriously considered suicide in 2023, compared with 14% of boys.
Women remain underrepresented in STEM, media leadership, venture-backed business, and executive roles.
The largest drop-offs for women occur not at entry, but in confidence, persistence, access to networks, and early promotion pathways.
Girls are enrolling in college at high rates. Yet access alone does not translate into influence, civic participation, or leadership within the institutions that shape public life. Too few are prepared to navigate elite institutions, build strategic networks, or translate talent into long-term leadership.
Her Climb was built to address that gap. We are preparing girls to lead the rooms that shape culture and capital.
Our girls were 8 and 9 when schools shut down in 2020. They were in third, fourth, or fifth grade: the critical years when kids learn how to take a social risk, like making a friend across a table. Instead, they spent them behind a screen.
COVID didn’t just cost them academically. It cost them the specific developmental window where we learn how to be in a room with other people.
It’s never just the activity, the field trip, or the site visit. It’s the intentional thru-line from the activity to a real outcome.
Access to a room, a track, a relationship, leading to a girl who leaves knowing she belongs there.
Rita Omokha
Rita Omokha is the founder of Her Climb and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is an award-winning journalist and author whose work focuses on young people, education, and civic agency. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, where she finished at the top of her class, her reporting and teaching explore how access, mentorship, and opportunity shape the futures of the next generation.
As a first-generation immigrant, Omokha created Her Climb to provide girls with what she once needed: direction, community, and the confidence to enter rooms where power and opportunity circulate.
Through Her Climb, she is building a long-term leadership pathway that equips high school girls with the mentorship, networks, and cultural fluency needed to navigate college, industry, and public life.
Read the founder’s statement →“Her Climb Is Creating A Path For Girls Who Deserve More”
As Omokha shared with me, “I’ve seen a clear divide in who has access to leadership development, professional networks, and meaningful college guidance." Her Climb, an organization that Omokha recently founded, "exists so today’s young women don’t have to navigate those pathways alone.”
How the program works
Summer Intensive
A three-week program held on Columbia University’s campus where rising high school sophomores select one of four tracks: Business, Creative Arts, Journalism, or STEM. Students complete hands-on projects, meet industry professionals, and build their cohort community.
Year-Round Programming
Saturday workshops, mentorship meetings, wellness programming, and enrichment experiences that continue throughout the academic year.
Career Tracks
Each track connects students with professionals working in industries where women remain underrepresented.
Program Pillars
These principles shape curriculum design, partnerships, and student support.
Our 5 key outcomes
Emotional resilience, rebuilt intentionally
This is the core of Her Climb. We’re not just teaching skills. We are deliberately rebuilding the capacity to be seen, to take a risk in front of people, to recover from embarrassment and try again. That’s the pandemic-specific gap, and it’s the outcome every other outcome sits on top of.
Real, tracked developmental growth
Not “this was a fun summer” or “that was a fun workshop.” We look at documented shifts: from anxious to confident, to standing up and presenting in a room, to making and keeping eye contact.
Career exposure that becomes identity
One scholar found her future goal of becoming a surgeon after visiting Lincoln Hospital. Another now names journalism as something she could picture doing for a living after one newsroom exercise. Exposure at this age is the first sketch of a future self.
A sustained relationship, not a one-time program
We recruit scholars in freshman year of high school and stay with them through college and early career, until they are 25. The developmental gap doesn’t close on its own. We close it through weekly touchpoints, including a group chat, and through consistency: showing up again and again until a girl trusts that this room, and Her Climb, will still be there.
A model that listens to itself
We listen to our scholars; they inform how we scale programmatically for future cohorts. For example, after our inaugural Summer Intensive, scholars told us they wanted more creative arts programming, longer breaks, better food, and a longer summer. We immediately began working on all four, from expanding creative arts experiences to seeking a long-term nutrition partner. We work for our scholars, and that responsiveness is itself an outcome: proof this is being built with our girls, not just for them.
The inaugural cohort
scholars in the inaugural cohort (16 completed Summer Intensive I)
Students represent 8 New York City public high schools
first-generation college-bound students
Average GPA
Participants come from all five boroughs of New York City
- 37.5% Black
- 43.75% Hispanic/Latina
- 18.75% Multiracial/Other
Students receive stipends to ensure participation is accessible to all families.
Our first impact data was proof of our hypothesis about what the pandemic cost young people, especially girls from under-resourced communities who already have fewer services and resources at their disposal.
Nearly every gain our girls named after the Summer Intensive was a social one: public speaking, speaking up, reaching out first, feeling comfortable being seen. One of the biggest challenges across the cohort, from what they told us directly and in the end-of-summer reflection survey, was connecting with new people.
For our girls, at this specific, tender age, that’s the recovery of something that was taken from them.—Rita Omokha, Founder
“Everyone deserves an education and a sense of belonging. When you have a community guiding you, learning becomes less overwhelming.”—Junasia BW., Harlem
“I want to build confidence in my voice and learn how to explain my ideas so people hear me.”—Allizon G., Harlem
“This program fills a gap our school has never been able to fill on our own.”—School partner
Sixteen girls arrived nervous.
They left more certain.
Every scholar in our inaugural Summer Intensive completed an end-of-summer reflection. In their own words, the change was not primarily academic — it was the moment each girl decided she was allowed to take up space.
All 16 scholars responded — every voice in the cohort is represented here.
Average rating, with 11 of 16 scholars scoring the program a 5.
15 of 16 chose a word like proud, grateful, confident, or prepared.
nervous · scared · anxious · overwhelmed · uncomfortable · pessimistic · awkward
certified · proud · grateful · confident · peaceful · prepared · excited · comfortable · happy · amazing
Asked to name three strengths they discovered or deepened, scholars converged on a single cluster: the courage to be seen and heard.
Every scholar could name a track she felt drawn to — and defend why. At their age, that articulation is the outcome; the distribution will keep moving.
Asked to describe a moment they saw themselves differently, scholars pointed overwhelmingly at presenting their work aloud — brand boards, future-self boards, teleprompter reads — and at site visits to CNN and Accenture, where a dream job stopped being abstract. Almost none named a specific lesson or worksheet — though tennis was a resounding favorite. The turning point was consistently the moment a girl was asked to stand up, be looked at, and speak, and discovered the room was on her side.
Journalism and STEM produced the clearest turning points. One scholar found a career she now names as her goal after spending time with CNN’s Sara Sidner during an extended tour and visit to their studios; another cited the Columbia Journalism School newsroom exercise as the first work she could picture doing for a living.
Our scholar most interested in STEM chose the track to build toward becoming a surgeon, and left the Lincoln Hospital visit more eager to learn than she arrived.
“I learned that I'm a likeable person.”
Aliana, Cohort ’26“I let myself feel uncomfortable to be able to get comfortable.”
Cyra, Cohort ’26“Usually I'm shy to present. But presenting my future self board in front of my peers, I didn't feel anxious.”
Serenity, Cohort ’26“This summer is the start of a new improved version of my life, and I can't wait to see where I go from here.”
Paloma, Cohort ’26“Yesterday I saw myself for the first time fully comfortable and confident in my skin.”
Zanna, Cohort ’26“I see a family I can make. I see my sisters.”
Shanarani, Cohort ’26We told our scholars to keep it real. Four requests came up repeatedly when scholars were asked what they wished we had done differently.
Deepen creative arts
69% chose the Creative Arts track, and several noted that site visits skewed toward business and journalism. They asked for more theater, dance, fashion, and design.
More time to breathe
Scholars asked for longer lunches, outdoor time, and unstructured space to bond — noting long stretches seated in one room.
Better food, real choice
The most consistent request across the cohort: more variety and healthier options at mealtimes.
Make it longer
Scholars asked us to extend the Summer Intensive from three weeks to six.
Based on end-of-summer reflections collected July 2026 from all 16 Summer Intensive scholars. Quotations are scholars’ own words, attributed by first name only.
Full report: impact.herclimb.org →Who guides Her Climb
Her Climb is guided by leaders with expertise in education, youth development, journalism, design, finance, and organizational strategy.
Leadership
Our Board
Founder of Her Climb; leads the board and keeps it aligned with the mission and strategic goals.
Partner at The Berkeley Partnership, leading large-scale transformation programs; guides fundraising strategy and donor engagement.
Head of US Video for Global Marketing at Goldman Sachs, formerly of CBS News, NowThis, and Cheddar; shapes Her Climb’s voice across video, social, and media.
Former Assistant Dean for Strategic Initiatives at Columbia Journalism School; guides the student experience, including college access and academic pathways.
Managing Director at Accenture; oversees corporate partnerships, sponsorship, and in-kind support.
For all requests, including interviews and speaking engagements. Additional assets and files are available upon request.