Tracey Edmonds never wanted to be on TV. She never dreamed of having cameras beside her face, reflecting wide and tight angles, flashing perfect teeth across the screen. A whiz-kid brainiac since birth, she attended Stanford University at 16 majoring in psycho-biology. Upon graduating at 20, Edmonds opened her own real estate and mortgage firm. But her…

I had my annual physical examination a few days ago, and upon checking my vitals—my blood pressure score, as I’m telling everybody, was 118/72—my doctor, a 60-something white woman, jokingly remarked, “Love it when my peeps are doing well.” And though in many other settings her attempt at colloquial bonding might have been met with…

While I applaud Lean In’s recent launch of their Ban Bossy campaign—some like it, some don’t—I encourage them to do more. It’s not, of course, that there’s a problem with the word “bossy”; it’s that societally, we hold different expectations about bossiness for girls and women. And just as we need to work to change how…

Major changes are coming to the SAT. Both the SAT and the ACT are used to influence admissions and placement at colleges and universities in the U.S. In 2016 the SAT will return to a 1,600-point scale from 2,400, eliminate antiquated vocabulary words and assess students’ understanding of context rather than rote memorization. The essay…

A growing collective of young black feminists is helping to give voice to communities that have long gone unheard and underrepresented. Social media platforms such as Twitter have given this new generation of activists a place to build community, to debate gender and sexual politics, and to use as a springboard for a career. Here’s…