Kirthi Jayakumar and Keturah Shammah are women driven by similar missions. While they grew up worlds apart, they were brought together through the power of World Pulse, an independent, women-led social network for social change. By harnessing the power of technology to accelerate women’s leadership, the organization not only connecting women, it is speeding up the pace towards gender equity.
Kirthi – who is from India – has a law degree and is a feminist researcher working in the areas of Women, Peace and Security, Transitional Justice, and Feminist Foreign Policy. Keturah is a Nigerian social entrepreneur and the Founder and Executive Director of the multi-global award-winning Nonprofit – Girls Education Mission International (GEM).
They have both overcome different challenges to get to where they are today, and through their participation in the World Pulse mentoring program, they are helping each other and other women to move forward and become changemakers within their communities and on the world stage.
For Kirthi, it was a tragic moment of unity among women with similar stories served as a turning point. “There was this moment in India following the brutal gang rape of a young woman in New Delhi, which led so many women to come out with their own personal stories. And I was one of those women,” Kirthi reveals.
As Kirthi settled into her career, she realized she was being held back by 13 years of continuous sexual violence and assault that she experienced as a child and young teenager. It was trauma that she was unable to talk about and had never really faced. She says her experiences silenced her, but she couldn’t quite put a finger on why. When she looked for spaces where she could talk about it, she found World Pulse.
“If you met me a decade ago, you wouldn’t have even heard this voice,” she says. “I was that quiet and withdrawn. I found my voice because of and through World Pulse and the community of encouragers there who just came in with so much love and support. To be seen and to be heard as a survivor who lived in silence all that time felt like a new experience.”
Kirthi began as a World Pulse community member and eventually rose to become one of the organization’s mentors. She now serves as the head of Community Engagement for the organization.
Keturah Shammah was paired with Kirthi as her mentee. Keturah had faced a different set of challenges, but they were obstacles, nonetheless. She was the first young woman in her Nigerian community to complete her bachelor’s degree prior to getting married. This bucked societal norms and as a result, she and her family encountered opposition and scorn from some members of their community. But Keturah did not let that stop her from making her mark in the world. She credits her World Pulse mentorship with Kirthi with empowering her to achieve remarkable things.
“I now have a global voice and a platform where I can share my stories. I got to know so many amazing women, and Kirthi is one of them who helped me to achieve my dreams,” she says. Having won both local and international awards, Keturah now serves as a Digital Ambassador and Featured Changemaker with World Pulse. She is also a certified Intel Master Trainer and is working to pay her experience forward by bringing mentorship to the girls of her community.
Dr. Nancy complimented Keturah’s work and said, “Women in Africa are an asset to their communities. When women do well, the community does well.” She also expressed how honored she felt that through Women Connect4Good she was able to support World Pulse’s mentorship program. Their human-oriented method of matching member profiles to connect mentees with the best possible mentors has helped a growing network of 100,000 women from more than 200 countries experience the power of mentorship.
Kirthi added that World Pulse is reaching and giving voice to tens of millions of women. She says, “What’s so beautiful about this program is that a woman in the US can be a mentor for a woman in India.”
World Pulse brings ever-increasing numbers of women together every day, eliminating boundaries and uniting and supporting women around the world. You can join them, visit www.worldpulse.org and sign up to become part of a growing global network of women helping women today.
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