“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

I will master my own destiny.

As a young child, I took note of the sharp contrast between the standards that existed for boys and girls in my stoic, conservative family. My brother was encouraged to speak his mind, to defend himself, to take on the world. No one ever expected me to be more than an agreeable, beautiful wallflower.

But I was always a dreamer.

And I discovered a community of other dreamers, of entrepreneurs who taught me to scratch at the walls and feel the paint peel off slowly under my fingertips. Little by little, I realized that none of those boundaries were ever real at all, that anything and everything is possible.

These past two years I forged myself within the halls of HBS – a community unparalleled in achievement and support. I have anchored my heart and mind, and now have the strength and clarity to launch the social movement I was meant to start: So She Did, empowering women to define their own measures of self-worth, a much-needed contradiction to the flat media messages and societal images of what makes a woman complete and praiseworthy.

We are each the master of our own destiny, and we need community to recognize and realize our dreams. I'm now the captain of my own ship, and it is my dream that So She Did will become a beacon for all other women to chart their own course.

She believed she could, #soshedid.

— Victoria Song