OUR COMMITMENT

Students need us now more than ever before.

Donate to our Girls Resiliency Education Fund here.

02/06 Mother/daughter/girl/grownup retreat, sacred stream, Berkeley, california

(Thank you RAMESH AND KALPANA Bhatia FAMILY Foundation)

02/15 longfellow middle school, berkeley, california

(Thank you RAMESH AND KALPANA Bhatia FAMILY Foundation)

02/23 willard middle school, berkeley, california

(Thank you RAMESH AND KALPANA Bhatia FAMILY Foundation)

02/24 Claremont middle school, oakland, california

(Thank you RAMESH AND KALPANA Bhatia FAMILY Foundation)

02/11 Martin Luther King junior middle school, berkeley, california

(Thank you RAMESH AND KALPANA Bhatia FAMILY Foundation)

03/02 Branciforte middle school Girls, santa cruz, california

(Thank you RAMESH AND KALPANA Bhatia FAMILY Foundation)

03/03 Pulliam elementary, stockton, california

03/08 International women’s Day at Novato High, Marin, california

(Thank you RAMESH AND KALPANA Bhatia FAMILY Foundation)

03/09 Branciforte middle school boys, santa cruz, california

(Thank you RAMESH AND KALPANA Bhatia FAMILY Foundation)

04/26 NAUSET REgional middle school, cape cod, massachusetts

(Thank you RAMESH AND KALPANA Bhatia FAMILY Foundation)

04/27 Boston College, massachusetts

04/28 nauset Regional high school, cape cod, massachusetts tbd

(Thank you RAMESH AND KALPANA Bhatia FAMILY Foundation)

04/29 Boston College, Mindfulness-based recovery Sip 'n learn

We support the advocacy movements that reflect our intersecting and multiple identities. Alongside our gatherings of girls and female-identified students, and boys and male-identifying students we seek to unify our communities, grounded in relationships with LGBTQ groups and those from diverse backgrounds to uplift and expand gender norms, expectations and stereotypes. We are committed to nurturing inclusive, caring spaces of belonging.

About Us

I'm the founder of the Love the Skin You’re In Youth Resiliency Project so I’m going to wing this and go first. This work was born out of my high school battle with an eating disorder. I ached so much during that time that I wanted to light the way forth for other young women; and in a culture that provides endless fodder for demystifying harmful representations of women and men, I cannot see the end of this labour of love in sight!

I've travelled the world, filling my cup by speaking to over 130 000 teens worldwide. From a European Tour to a National Youth Week Tour across New Zealand, from Cape Cod to Vancouver, I have inspired youth to find compassion within themselves, and to resist domination-based masculinity, and the hypersexualized looks-based competition that floods their Instagram feeds. I believe we can gather our hearts together to lead a new conversation about our bodies and beings and expand what it means to be masculine and feminine. I graduated with Distinction in Women’s Studies at McGill University and now live and travel between Caledon, Ontario, Canada and Santa Cruz, California with my husband who’s also an activist. It has been the greatest privilege of my life to stand in raw vulnerability before 500 youth at a time and remind them of their True Nature.

With open heart and warm light,

Riane Eisler and the Center for Partnership Systems

My mentor, Dr. Riane Eisler, is a systems scientist, cultural historian, and futurist, whose research on partnership, care, and cultural transformation has reshaped how societies understand equity, well-being, and human potential. Her classic book, The Chalice and the Blade, has sold over 500, 000 copies; it has been published in 37 languages and is currently in its 57th U.S. print edition. She is also the reknowned author of Sacred Pleasure, The Real Wealth of Nations, Nurturing our Humanity, as well as many others. Dr. Eisler pioneered the extension of human rights theory and action to the majority of humanity: women and children. She is the recipient of the Distinguished Peace Leadership Award, earlier given to the Dalai Lama, and other national and international awards. In February 2026 Dr. Eiser received her motherland’s highest cross of honor, the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. In March 2026, she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, an honour that recognizes her lifetime of work.

In 2019, in collaboration with Dr. Eisler and the Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia Family Foundation, we launched the Girls Resiliency Education Fund to support Love the Skin You’re In as an official project of the Center for Partnership Systems.

Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia Family Foundation

The Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia Family Foundation, founded in 2006, is a private family foundation established by Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia. The Foundation is dedicated to making impactful change around the world by funding innovative solutions and programs that enrich communities and serve the common good. The Foundation's grant making focuses on local, national, and international organizations that support intellectual and physical diversities, medical and health care research, youth empowerment, mental health,  human rights, and social justice. The Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia Family Foundation was awarded 2025 non-profit of the year award at the LA Business Journals Awards Ceremony.

We are exceedingly grateful for the Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia Family Foundation for providing an inaugural $50, 000 seed grand for the Girls Resliency Education Fund, a collaboration with Dr. Riane Eisler and The Center for Partnerhip Systems dedicated to lift up the work of Love the Skin You’re in.

Western NY Comprehensive Care Center for Eating Disorders

Directed out of the University of Rochester School of Nursing the WNYCCCED is a partnership between the school of nursing and the Child and Adolescent Eating Disorders Program at Golisano Children’s Hospital. It is one of three legislatively mandated comprehensive care centers for eating disorders funded by the NY State Office of Mental Health.

Dr. Richard Kreipe MD, FAAP, FSAM, FAED, the founding Director of the Child and Adolescent Eating Disorder Program, is a board-certified pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist, as well as a Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders. Dr. Kreipe is a consultant to the American Psychiatric Association regarding diagnostic criteria for eating disorders in young people, and is a past-President of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. He is the founding Medical Director of the Western New York Comprehensive Care Center for Eating Disorders, which forms a coordinated, integrated network of care across the full range of services and settings required for the treatment of eating disorders. Dr. Kreipe won the National Academy for Eating Disorders Award for his pioneering pediatric work in 2015. Not only has Kreipe’s vision humanized a widely misunderstood disease, it contextualized it as developmental—a key advance in understanding the adolescent brain.

Mary Tantillo is one of the founder and director of the WNYCCCED. She is also the co-author of Understanding Teen Eating Disorders: Warning Signs, Treatment Options, and Stories of Courage and Multifamily Therapy Group for Young Adults with Anorexia: Reconnecting for Recovery. Influenced by some of the top feminist researchers at Wellesley such as Carol Gilligan and Jean Baker Miller, Tantillo’s work sheds light on a widely misunderstood disease. Focusing on the relational elements of mental health, she reframes anorexia as a disease of disconnection, opening the way for a more integrative understanding of the interpersonal and intrapersonal pathways that lead to disordered eating. Dr. Tantillo has devoted more than 40 years to providing care and support to patients and families coping with eating disorders across the spectrum of clinical settings. She has conducted research to evaluate an innovative relational/motivational approach to understanding and treating young adults with anorexia nervosa through the use of multifamily therapy group. She has also implemented prevention approaches that encourage partnerships among parents and school personnel to create home and school environments that foster wellness and reinforce positive body image.

Enter Love the Skin You’re In.

In 2013, the WNYCCCED organized a Love the Skin You’re In tour to middle schools and high schools across Rochester for National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. They invited me to be their guest speaker for their annual event. In 2018, Dr. Kreipe then travelled nine hours return up to Belleville, Ontario to watch me work my magic with students at Moira Bell Secondary School. I invited him up onstage to talk about the power of mindfulness practice in changing the brain.

The Global CoLab Network

What does it take for a formerly diet-addicted 16 year-old to start a body positivity Instagram channel that grows to 2000 followers with 600 likes on every post in 6 months? For a high school Girls Leadership Committee to grow by 400% in a day? For a 15 year-old to declare herself the next President of the United States? For young women to come together in the intimacy of a living room to tell the truths of their hearts?

Two women with vision from aligned organizations linking hearts and arms to reach young women.

Founded by Linda Staheli, The Global Co Lab Network or "Co Lab" empowers teens globally to be changemakers utilizing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a handy framework.  They host weekly virtual teen-led gatherings, Sustainable Development Goals hubs addressing equality, climate change, mental health, quality education, hunger, plastic pollution, Turkish teens for peace education, artists for the SDGs, and a Hub for young women in Afghanistan. Throguh their Teens Dream Challenge, now in its 12th year, any teen can learn about the SDGs and then submit their suggestions for addressing these goals with a short video in our annual global video challenge, Teens Dream. The Co Lab takes a teen delegation yearly to the United Nation's High Level Political Forum in New York City to advocate on the SDGs.

The Global Co Lab Network partnered with Brie Mathers and Love the Skin You’re In to support teen female foundational development to empower stronger sisterhood, leadership and change making in the Greater Washington, DC area.

For three years the Co Lab led a significant engagement effort in Arlington and Fairfax Virginia to bring Brie to the region to wow the hearts of young women in a way that would have lasting ripples across Arlington and Fairfax Counties. Her talk, Love the Skin You’re In, engaged the life force of students who aren’t only still talking about the impact, but are taking active measures to create a softer world where women’s voices and imaginations are more valued.

Brie’s moving spark presentations were booked at the Arlington Public Schools’ Whole Child Conference, HB Woodlawn, Washington Lee High, and Thomas Jefferson Middle School as support from Arlington Public Schools and the Josh Anderson Foundation flowed in. Mothers and students alike were blown open by the conversation that speaks to the heart of girl culture. One mom could not have summed it up more perfectly! By early June, Brie was back, to Fairfax County where she offered two talks to accommodate 800 young women at McLean High. Organized by a powerhouse of young female leaders who claimed ownership for creating the experience, the events, in partnership with a packed follow up salon, sparked a clamor of young women to join the girls leadership committee, growing it by 400% overnight! One of McLean’s competent leads, Ellie, now joins the Global CoLab Network and Love the Skin You’re In as our summer intern.  See her blog here.

In addition, 25 young women showed up for a free area-wide yoga event hosted at Sun and Moon Yoga. Brie returned to Arlington co-lead a follow up workshop for teen girls with Annie Moyer, Director of Sun and Moon Yoga.

What followed was a multitude of Global Co-Lab Salons designed to free young women’s voices and engage their fertile minds in creating – and joining pre-existing – networks of support that strengthen their resiliency.

We are excited to report the following extraordinary girl power outcomes from our work together:

• leaving unhealthy relationships

• resisting dieting

• feeling strong and powerful

• feeling a sense of hope

• resisting self harming behaviors

• feeling connective rather than competitive or alone

• feeling their value beyond being eye candy

• ready to adopt mindfulness practices

• LGBTQ resilience in the face of bigotry and hate

• turning the corner on body loathing and shaming

• seeing themselves as leaders

• feeling love for and loved by their school and peers

One Billion Rising

Launched on Valentine’s Day (V-Day) in 2012, and founded by playwright and activist Eve Ensler (V), One Billion Rising is the largest global mobilization to end gender-based violence. A year following Riane Eisler’s talk at its 15-year anniversary in Monterey, Brie keynoted the event on the Monterey peninsula.

Sun and Moon Yoga

Sun and Moon Yoga has been an Arlington, VA spirit home for Love the Skin You’re In. The founder, Annie Moyer, houses me in her downstairs room whenever I visit the area. Together we have co-led Yoga workshops, held open classes for girls and their moms, and bonded over tea and cultural studies. I am grateful to Sun and Moon for opening their space for young women looking for connection.

Ontario Speak Up Grants

We have travelled extensively across Ontario. This was thanks in large part to Ontario government Speak Up Grants, government-issued grants that students could apply for to uplift their student body with positive mental health initiatives. We enjoyed a 100 percent success rate with these grants; every school that applied received funding to bring Love the Skin You’re In to their school. At its zenith, we visited eleven cities in Spring of 2018. When Ford’s conservative government came to power, they stripped schools of this deeply needed funding source. We then focused our efforts on the Girls Resiliency Education Fund in California. We envision creating a similar fund for Love the Skin You’re In, which is also a registered not-for-profit in Ontario.

Wanderlust Yoga Festival

I was one of nine Lululemon Ambassadors across the U.S. to be invited to speak at Wanderlust Yoga Festival in California. I presented Riane Eisler’s blueprint for a more just, sustainable world through gender equity. My talk about the history of power, sex, and money, looked at how the outward representation of women has changed drastically over the last 10,000 years. It discussed how the world would greatly benefit from not only a better representation of women, but also a better treatment of them. She asks what we can each do to help our global society return to a place of empathy and compassion. "The status of women and girls in a country is a stronger predictor of success than its GDP." I discussed

• How we've been taught to perceive women and girls a certain way through cultural norms and expectations

• Why a world in which women and men are equal would be a world with a better standard of living for all

• Steps we can take now to work toward a more just and equal world through the Caring Economy Campaign

YWCA Power of Being a Girl Conferences

YWCA Canada is doing the powerful work of transforming our world to a more gender-equal and life-affirming place. It has been an honour to partner with them to bring Love the Skin You’re In assemblies to their Power of Being a Girl Conferences in different parts of Ontario. One of our favourite days ever is below!