NDP Students Find Inspiration at Junior Achievement’s Leading Ladies Event

Eight NDP students spent the morning of Tuesday, November 10, with some of the Baltimore region’s most accomplished women at Junior Achievement of Central Maryland’s JA Leading Ladies event, held at the Stanley Black & Decker Learning Center in Towson. Social Studies Department Chair Anne Printz and WIN Program Coordinator Amy Alfriend went with the students.

Junior Achievement of Central Maryland marked the event’s 10th anniversary last year. JA Leading Ladies pairs high school girls with professional women for a morning of guided mentoring conversations, networking, and inspiration. The program is built around leadership development, career exploration, and personal growth. Its goal is to help young women see what is possible for them and give them the confidence to pursue it.

Throughout the morning, NDP students talked with women leaders working in many fields. They asked questions about career paths, heard how these women got where they are, and practiced the kind of professional networking that will serve them well in college and beyond.

The highlight of the day was the keynote address by Katie Pumphrey, a Baltimore artist and ultramarathon open-water swimmer. In June 2024, Pumphrey became the first person to swim the 24 miles from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. She entered the water at Sandy Point State Park before dawn and reached Harborplace about 14 hours later. Along the way she swam through the site of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge and fought rough, wind-driven waves. She called the swim her “love letter to Baltimore.” It celebrated the Inner Harbor being declared swimmable after decades of cleanup work, and it was also a tribute to women’s sports.

Pumphrey has swum the English Channel twice and has also crossed the Catalina Channel and circled Manhattan. She drew on those experiences to talk with students about perseverance, resilience, and treating hard things as chances to grow.

Our students came back to campus with new contacts, new ideas about where their interests could take them, and a reminder that the women who lead today once stood where they stand now.