Julia Bluhm, 14, is a 9th grader and has been involved in the Civil Rights Team for many years. She spends many hours a week dancing ballet. As a feminist, she not only wants to put a stop to sexualization and stereotypes of girls in the media, but also to negative stereotypes of ballet dancers.

Maya Brown, 17, is a senior in high school from Waterville, Maine. She is the president of the Girls Advisory Board for Hardy Girls Healthy Women, member of her school’s Gay Straight Trans Alliance, and has been a SPARK blogger for over a year. She is an avid writer, theatre geek, and feminist. She hopes that someday all girls will see themselves as the beautifully unique people they really are.

Nadia Bourne, 21, is a vocalist, musician, writer and activist. She is also an English major with a minor in theology at St. John’s University. When she isn’t working as a writing consultant in her University’s Writing Center you can find her on women’s empowerment panels, or frequenting the underground arts scene in NYC.

Eliana Buenrostro, 20, is a recent community college transfer student and Gender Studies major at UCLA. She is a devoted volunteer at Planned Parenthood and an organizer at Ladyfest IE. She is passionate about bringing attention to the lack of positive role models for women and people of color in the media. She wants everyone, especially young girls to learn to use a critical lens when it comes to absorbing media. Her Mexican heritage is what inspires her dedication to fight the injustices people of color are dealt. She can currently be found curating the Ladyfest IE Tumblr.

Carina S. Cruz, 16, has three great passions: her culture, New York City, and her education. She hopes to someday be a person who can change the world, whether it’s from writing for SPARK or taking a part in Doctors Without Borders.

Celeste Dafne, 19, is a reader, TV junkie, nerd, and feminist, though these things do not always go easily together. Because of harmful stereotypes wherever she turns for entertainment, she tries to speak out against misogyny and racism in everyday life, but hopes to someday be an activist in larger projects as well. In the meantime, Celeste is trying to decide on a major as she enters her second year of university.

Ria Desai, 17, is a high school senior living in California’s Bay Area. When she’s not blogging for SPARK, she’s dancing on her school’s jazz team, reading crazy amounts of books, and making waves as a Future Problem Solver. She especially cares about traditional gender roles, especially in Indian culture, and loves to point out oh-so-prominent female stereotypes in the media.

Britney Franco, 13, will be an 8^th grader as of September 2012.  She’s a writer (and has been since a very young age), blogger, feminist, and artist. She make collages based on fashion, politics, or issues in our society. Whenever she tells people that she’s a feminist, they think that she’s someone who “believes that everything that is said by a woman is right, even if it isn’t” or “someone who hates all men and thinks they should not exist”. Her goal is for people to see what feminism is and embrace it; it is showing people that women and men should have equal rights and that women should  be portrayed as humans in the media and other places, not as inanimate objects or merely things that are here to serve the needs of men.

Sariel Hana Friedman, 16, is a junior at Crossroads School in Los Angeles, CA. She is a published poet, artist, graphic designer and photographer. Sariel loves travelling, watching films, listening to music, anything British and the 1960’s. She co-founded her school’s Feminism Club and idolizes Gloria Steinem, Joni Mitchell, Frida Kahlo and Lena Dunham. She was exposed to feminism at a very early age, by her mother: a pioneering female director. Sariel’s favorite Beatle is George Harrison and she follows the philosophy of Oscar Wilde — “Be yourself; everyone else is taken.” Blog her at bysariel.tumblr.com

Anya Josephs, 18, is a freshman at Columbia University. She comes from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she worked as the president of her high school’s QSA, a member of the board of directors with One Song Productions, a theatre company led entirely by high school students, and a director for Unified Theater, a national non-profit where young people with and without disabilities work together to create original musical theatre. She’s passionate about nerd culture, theatre, body positivity, and inclusivity in feminism.

Shanzeh Khurram, 18, is a radical feminist, bookworm, and writer. She is passionate about art, poetry, and meditation, and hopes to be a published author one day. A feminist since age 10, she is committed to erasing gender stereotypes and putting a stop to the objectification of women.

Izzy Labbe, 14, is a 9th grader from Waterville, ME. When she’s not promoting a healthy image of girls by blogging for SPARK, she’s fighting for LGBTQ rights as a member of her junior high’s Gay Straight Trans Alliance, belting show tunes in the shower, writing, acting, & competitively swimming. She’s also quite fond of big noses, the Netherlands, and, of course, feminism.

Georgia Luckhurst, 14, is a British girl who is obsessed with fashion, feminism and Rookie Mag.  She writes on her blog Art For No Sake and likes writing poetry and making art.  She is also obsessed with the film Romeo+Juliet and has seen it about a hundred times.

Annemarie McDaniel, 18,  is a freshman at Yale University who is passionate about women, politics, the media, and economics. After suffering from bullying in middle school, she realized she wasn’t alone in her body insecurity, and began fighting to change society’s strict definition of beauty. Annemarie aims to ignite body and leadership confidence in women of all ages.

Shavon L. McKinstry, 19, is a journalism student at Syracuse University who hails from Olympia, WA. She was a head writer on her high school’s newspaper, which, in combination with the teachers and curriculum at the school, inspired her to learn more about issues of equality, spanning from women’s rights, gender rights, racial equality and all other civil rights issues. As a consumer of popular media and entertainment, namely television, comics, video games and movies, her main goal is to see true, honest improvement in the portrayals of women, minorities, queer people and all others who are misrepresented in the entertainment industry. You can find her on Twitter here.

Luci Navas, 15, is a high school sophomore, theatre geek, and expert procrastinator. She devotes most of her time developing her leadership skills as a stage manager for her school’s theatre department and as her class vice president. She’s passionate about intersectional feminism and comprehensive immigration reform, the latter of which she has wrote about here. In her free time, she can usually be found making clothes, searching for her keys, or building blanket forts. Follow her on twitter and tumblr.

Madeleine Nesbitt, 15, is in 9^th grade in York, Pennsylvania.  She writes for the teen program at her local newspaper.  She is particularly interested in how changes in fashion correlate with changes in society and views of how society should be.  She is interested in activism working through creative writing such as novels and poetry, and has been an Anglophile from an early age.

Riyandini Putri, 19, goes by Dee and lives in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She studies Veterinary Medicine at Gadjah Mada University, but sometimes isn’t sure about it. She finds her life on the Internet and lives the way she wants. She wishes to be like Wednesday Addams, but it’s tough. In her real boring life, she just tries to survive. She’s moody, and created Spark Zine (not affiliated with SPARK!) in 2012. You can read it here.

Seila Rizvic, 20, was born in Bosnia but moved to Canada when she was very young. She is currently living in Montreal, where she attends school with a major in Liberal Arts and Women’s Studies. She enjoys vegan cooking and baking, watching documentaries and having a nice chat over a cup of coffee.

Liz Rodriguez-Florido, 19, was born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba and grew up outside Chicago. She is a sophomore at Yale University and is interested in global affairs, history, film and journalism. She wants to help tell the stories of the underrepresented and believes popular culture can track the progress and change of social norms.