500 People

A few months ago I was chosen to speak at a confrence in front of over 500 people. This was a life changing event that very few people get to expiriance yet I had the honor of being one of the 3 speakers at this specific event.

In October of 2023 I was chosen to be a guest speaker at an exclusive event. I am in the Olympia Snowe Women’s Leadership Institute which is a program for very few girls grades 10-12. You are chosen by school staff Freshman year and are in the program until graduation. Each year is a new challenging part of the program, Sophomore year is Values, Junior year is Voice and Senior year is Vision. Very few girls get chosen for this program from each school and I was lucky enough to be chosen.

When I was contacted about this opportunity I was very excited, it was originally supposed to be me and another girl from my same grade but something changed and we weren’t able to speak at that event. I was contacted again to speak at this event and happily obliged but as circumstances happened the event was moved to a later date. Between this time and the new date of the event I started to feel like I shouldn’t be in the event, I tried to back out but I was unable to so I went along with it anyway and I as so glad that I did.

The event took place at the Holiday Inn in Portland ME. Over 500 men, women, employees and CEO’s from big companies were gathered to hear 3 perspectives about the program from 3 different speakers, one of which was me. These men and women from different companies are the same people who contribute money and scholarships into this program. There were 2 other speakers at this event, one of which was a Junior and the other a high school graduate in her second year of college. We went one after the other speaking on a stage to all of the contributers, my speech being about how I found my voice and was able to stand up and talk to them that day.

While I was waiting for the event to start I was thinking about how I had got to that point and was feeling important to everyone else. This was the first time I had done something like this and was extremely nervous but not as nervous as I should have been. While I was walking around after the event had concluded I was feeling extremely honored to have been able to do this, I met so many people who thanked me over and congratulated me on doing this and overall I found out that I was able to stand up on that stage by myself and talk about things that mattered to me.

“Policy Talks @ the Ford School lecture by Senator Olympia Snowe” by University of Michigan’s Ford School is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.