HISTORY

WOT was founded in 1997 by Television Journalist & Author Jennifer Valoppi and Telemundo President Don Browne as a way to help young at-risk young women live up to their full potential.

The inspiration and design for Women of Tomorrow came from Jennifer’s college years as a psychology major. While studying psychology of women she came across two pieces of research that still hold true today -- the first is that self-limiting beliefs of women are what hold women back in the workplace, not mens' beliefs that women can not succeed. The second is that women who do make it to the top like being the only ones there and don’t do much to help other women along. Jennifer wanted to change that. So in 1997, while she was the main news anchor at WTVJ NBC 6 in Miami, Jennifer designed a unique program for highly accomplished professional women to reach out to at-risk girls. With the support of then NBC 6 President & General Manager Don Browne, a long time supporter of women and minorities in the workplace and of mentoring as a tool for empowering people, Women of Tomorrow was created.

Women of Tomorrow is about women helping women and its program model is unique and effective -- highly accomplished professional women meet with small groups of at-risk girls in public high schools once a month to discuss ways to overcome obstacles and to provide skills for success. In its first year of operation, Women of Tomorrow commissioned an independent psychologist to conduct pre and post self-esteem tests of the girls participating and a statistically significant increase in the self-esteem of the WOT Mentees was found.

Jennifer hand selected the inaugural 23 Founding Women of Tomorrow Mentors who went out to six public high schools in 1997. Since then Mentors come to Women of Tomorrow through referral from an existing Mentor and WOT currently operates in 98 public high schools and reaches approximately 2,000 Mentees with its network of 250 Mentors.

In 2000, WOT established its Scholarship Program at the request of its Mentees who were excited to pursue the goals they had developed with the help of their Mentors. One of WOT's Founding Mentors, Mariita Srebnick, threw a New Year's Eve party and raised $50,000 to help Women of Tomorrow establish the George Feldenkreis & Mariita Srebnick Scholarship Endowment at Miami Dade College. Since then, WOT has awarded $1.89 Million Dollars in scholarships to 699 deserving young women and has mentees in hundreds of colleges including, Harvard, George Washington University, Howard University, Columbia University, University of Miami, St. Thomas University, Miami Dade College, Broward College and many more.