The room, filled with at least 200 young women from across Texas, had at most a third of the audience raise their hands.
After listening to a few inspiring women and their stories, the question was asked again.
“Who here is ready to run for office?”
This time, almost every single hand was raised up high with courage, conviction, and determination.
This past February, the UT Austin chapter of IGNITE attended the 6th annual convention for women interested in politics. IGNITE is a national organization dedicated to inspiring and preparing young women to become the next generation of political leaders. With Texas Women’s University as the host, the UT Austin chapter attended talks with elected officials, workshops for mapping out future campaigns, and seminars focusing on specific legislative topics, among other things.
Our keynote speaker, Texas Representative Nicole Collier, told us the story of a young girl who, as she was finishing high school, got pregnant and couldn’t finish her senior year. She asked us how quickly we would dismiss this young girl as one who had just ruined her life and who would never amount to anything. With a proud look on her face, she smiled and told us that the girl we were so quick to dismiss had been her at a younger age. But despite her circumstances, she wanted to be a lawyer—and God help anyone who would want to get in her way.
Now, a successful lawyer and representative to the city of Fort Worth, Collier told a room full of hopeful young women that running for office is one of the greatest services we can perform for our country. She told us that instead of asking ourselves, “who am I to want to do this?”, we should ask ourselves, “who aren’t I?”
So why is a conference solely dedicated to telling the stories of women like Representative Collier or offering workshops for campaign logistics important? Because it is the young women of today that will be sitting in legislative offices, leading campaign offices, and making up majority of the voting population in a not too distant future.
Looking into the eyes of the young women who were raising their hands, I saw a better tomorrow. One that starts with a young girl thinking “who aren’t I?”