ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT Haley Kilpatrick
BY ALYSSA ALBERT
G
GIRL TALK
irl Talk, Inc. is commemorating its 10th anniversary this month by celebrating its national success over the years. The non-profit organization helps middle school girls by partnering them with high school aged, female mentors. Haley Kilpatrick, an alumna of Kennesaw State University and Girl Talk’s director and founder, knew the troubles of middle school girls all too well. Kilpatrick began her education in an inner-city elementary school with not much to her name. She grew up in Albany, Ga, which is located in the Southwest part of the state. Many of the kids in her school did not have lunch money or many clean clothes. In 6th grade, Kilpatrick’s parents sent her to a private school nearby to help her prepare for college. When she arrived, it was completely different from everything she had known. All the girls had pretty cotton dresses, monogrammed backpacks and neatly trimmed hair; she left her first day feeling excluded and discouraged. Those feelings lasted all of middle school as Kilpatrick was continually picked on and made fun of by her classmates. The summer before Kilpatrick 23
began high school, she joined and this became a main theme the dance team and an older for Girl Talk. girl on the team offered to give Kilpatrick talked to her her rides to and from practice. headmaster about the plan, During these rides, Kilpatrick’s and in the fall of 2002, she was friend gave her high school sure only five or six girls would advice and helped her feel show up at her first meeting. confident about her new stage At the first Girl Talk meeting 80 in life. For the first time she percent of the middle school really felt accepted. girls attended. Kilpatrick was “It was this bizarre silence. shocked, but knew this was Everyone faced bullying and what she was supposed to be peer pressure, but no one talked about it,” Kilpatrick said. After her freshman year of high school, Kilpatrick’s younger sister was beginning her first year of middle school. Instead of letting all the hard things Kilpatrick had gone through get to her, she decided to stand up and make a difference. That one decision to start talking instead of shying away is where Girl Talk began. Kilpatrick felt that if she started a weekly get-together for middle school girls to just talk with high school girls it could help inspire a difference. “Hearing you’re not Through her organization and book, Girl Talk, Inc. alone is what makes all Founder Haley Kilpatrick has helped teens throughout the difference,” she said, the U.S. build self-esteem.