We Began
On July 6, 2026, Her Climb welcomed its inaugural cohort at Columbia University’s Pulitzer Hall — sixteen young women, their families, mentors, and champions, together in one room.
What follows is a look back: the program of that morning, the scholars we celebrated, and the moments our cameras caught along the way.
Her Climb is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit expanding opportunity for young women from under-resourced communities — a free, multi-year leadership pathway combining academic preparation, cultural fluency, civic engagement, and career exposure, from freshman year through college and into early career.
of high-school girls report persistent sadness or hopelessness.
seriously considered suicide — higher for girls of color.
To ensure girls arrive at college and beyond confident, connected, and prepared to participate — and to lead.
A generation who enter the rooms that shape culture and capital — and move within them with clarity and confidence.
We are preparing girls to lead the rooms that shape culture and capital.
Claiming space in any room — without shrinking.
Exposure to the industries that decide who advances.
Mental-health tools that meet real pressure.
A community that stays, long after one summer.
Strategy, financial literacy, and the language of capital.
Performance, storytelling, and creative voice.
Narrative, media, and public conversation.
Science, technology, and confidence to claim space.
Across every track we teach cultural fluency — transferable to any room, any career, any future.
Sixteen rising high-school sophomores, representing seven public schools across four New York City boroughs.
Harlem
Upper Manhattan
Washington Heights
Corona, Queens
Far Rockaway, Queens
High School of Arts & Technology
KIPP NYC College Prep
Manhattan Center for Science & Mathematics
Murray Hill Academy
School for the Performing Arts
Urban Assembly School of Media Studies
Our Scholars
Ceremony
meant to lead.
You don’t find yourself, you build yourself.
Success is not supposed to cost you your peace.
Omokha
Author & Professor
Rita Omokha is an award-winning Nigerian-American journalist in New York City. She was born and spent her early childhood in Benin City, Edo State.
The author of the critically acclaimed book Resist: How a Century of Young Black Activists Shaped America, her research, writing, and commentary on politics, race, and vulnerable communities are regularly featured in outlets including CNN, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, ELLE, Glamour, The Guardian, MSNBC, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, and WIRED.
She’s an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she graduated at the top of the 2020 class, receiving some of the institution’s highest awards, including the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. During her time at Columbia, she served as co-president of the African Student Association, which spotlighted the intersection of journalism, press freedom, and the African diaspora.
“I created Her Climb for the girls who remind me of me: ambitious, brilliant, and underestimated.”
A first-generation immigrant and Ivy League graduate, Rita built Her Climb for the girls who were never told these rooms belonged to them. Her connection to its four tracks is personal — journalism her first love, business her foundation, creative work her throughline, and the STEM classrooms where she first learned what it takes for a girl to claim her space. Her Climb ensures the next generation doesn’t just shape the future; they own their place in it.
Her commitment to service was cemented with AmeriCorps in 2013, and it endures today. An honors graduate of Northeastern University’s business program, she brings strategy, storytelling, and lived experience to everything Her Climb builds.
meant to lead.
Pulitzer Hall · New York City