Jensine Larsen answering questions on a panel. (Photos courtesy of Meredith Hutchison.)

Jensine Larsen with some of her World Pulse members. (Photos courtesy of Meredith Hutchison.)

Jensine showing off her bicep muscle as a symbol of girl power. (Photos courtesy of Meredith Hutchison.)

Creating Citizen Activists

Jensine Larsen BA1999 believes that the creative human potential of women and girls is the greatest untapped resource on earth. As a young freelance journalist working in Southeast Asia and South America, she realized that the immense challenges facing women in remote and impoverished regions were seldom covered in the mainstream media, so she started World Pulse to give these women a voice. What began as a print magazine was transformed in 2007 into the interactive World Pulse website (worldpulse.com), where any woman with access to a cyber cafe or a cell phone can share her story and find support from other women.

Since then, some of those stories have been picked up by outlets ranging from CNN to the BBC and the Huffington Post. In his book Half the Sky, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff recommends joining World Pulse as one of the top four things people can do in 10 minutes to support women globally.

World Pulse also offers women training as digital changemakers, and it provides them with a means to lobby governments and other organizations as they try to create more just societies. So far, some 50,000 women from 190 countries have taken advantage of this global forum to call attention to social problems in their countries and to help create solutions. When the United Nations set up its UN Women agency in 2011, World Pulse encouraged its members to make recommendations to set priorities for change, and women from 90 countries responded.

A 2013 Forward under 40 Award honoree, Larsen has also earned a Lives of Commitment Award celebrating women spiritual leaders from Auburn Theological Seminary and was recognized as one of Rockefeller’s Top 100 Next-Century Innovators. She was named a Woman Who Inspires by Donna Karan New York, and Morgan Stanley-Smith Barney selected her as one of its Next-Generation Changemakers.

Larsen is in demand as a keynote speaker, has appeared on NPR and PBS, and has presented at numerous conferences, including TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design), Women in Technology International, and the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship.