I have a lot of social media friends who share photos of their partners. I have a lot of social media friends who never post photos of their significant others. I know some people who share every detail about their job and others who keep their professional life quiet....

Interviewing folks for Service Spotlights is already inspiring, but especially so when projects are founded from young generations. Aarya Gokhale is a rising high school junior in Virginia and also the founder of Virtually Verbal, a student-led language tutoring organi...

In a recent conversation on a topic I’ve already forgotten, a friend typed back the following line: “This I don’t know.”

Forever part word nerd, part grammar geek, I stopped copied the text onto a notepad, and carried on with my afternoon.

At first it was the way it soun...

Seeking inspiration, I opened my document of half-written notes and semi-lovely lines. Forever writing, this page is a catch-all for in-progress thoughts and potential future blog posts. One immediately caught my eye. “Write a blog post about why self-performance revie...

Every now and then, you are fortunate enough to be connected to the kind of energy and light that this world needs. That’s how I felt after exchanging emails with Pranavi Reddi, Founder of Kindness4All in Frisco, Texas. She is doing absolutely amazing things in the wor...

About a decade ago, when my oldest brother was living in Iowa and my mother and I had taken a train across the midwest to visit, I found myself staring at blotchy skin in the mirror. Hours before we had returned from a day at the water park and there I was, freshly sho...

Through The Smile Project community, I became connected to Estella Irambona, the CEO and Founder of Mamas For Burundi Association (MAFOBA). This is her story.

Liz: Let’s start in true Smile Project fashion. Give me a “Happiness is.”

Estella: Happiness is wellbeing.

Liz: T...

Like many people in my home country of the United States and in other places around the world, I am feeling the strain of what has - in so many ways - been an unprecedented and uncertain year. 

It’s hard to continually be exposed to news that is heartbreaking and anger-...

Recently, I had the great joy of connecting with Arya Nalavade, Shivangi Gosain, Eesha Kulkarni, and Amruta Rajeev, four high school students based in Virginia. Arya, Shivangi, Eesha, and Amruta are the founders of The Gift of Learning. What started as a small program...

Last year, a friend and I witnessed something traumatic. About a week after the incident, it hit me. I was angry and shocked and deeply sad. I also knew the only person I wanted to talk to, in that moment, was that friend. 

And they were only a text or a phone call away...