As a child, Amber always had dolls whose features mirrored her own, and she considered them important symbols of self-love. Armed with a $3,000 grant, she founded Beauty Gap, a nonprofit foundation that distributes black dolls to African orphanages with the aim of providing children there with a similar sense of self-worth. The name of the organization was inspired by a conversation Amber had with a professor at Chapel Hill. The woman shared that she had been pressured to close the gap between her teeth after moving to the U.S. from Africa. Amber, who has a similar gap, felt the same pressure growing up in her predominantly white neighborhood. "We judge ourselves by a standard of beauty imposed by other people," she says. "In Africa, the gap is considered a standard of beauty."