Emily May is an award-winning leader in the anti-street-harassment movement. In 2005, at the age of 24, she co-founded Hollaback! in New York City, and in 2010 she became its first full-time executive director. Hollaback!’s mission is to give women and LGBTQ folks an empowered response to street harassment, and ultimately, to end it.

Emily brings a fresh perspective to social action in the digital age. She believes the internet provides opportunities to tackle discrimination, by transforming discrimination from a lonely experience into a piece of a larger, public movement. Hollaback! gives women, girls, and LGBTQ individuals an empowered, real-time response to street harassment that will build public awareness on why street harassment matters, and how it hurts. Emily, who hold a Master’s Degree in Social Policy from the London School of Economics, argues that a crowd-sourced movement is the key to changing policy and minds, and ultimately, creating a world where everyone has the right to feel safe and confident. For a sample flier used for college events, click here.

Prior to running Hollaback!, Emily worked in the anti-poverty world as a case manager, political action coordinator, director of development, and most recently, a one-woman research and development team. She has also worked on four political campaigns.

Emily is a winner of the 2008 Stonewall Women’s Award, a 2009 Progressive Women’s Voices Fellow, a 2011 “21 leaders” recipient by Women’s E-news, a “40 under 40″ leader by the New Leadership Council in 2011, one of thirty “Women Making History” by the Women’s Media Center, and an Ashoka “ChangemakHER.”

Feminism, Women, Empowerment, Influential Women, Female Leadership,