'Encourage, Inspire, Protect the Girls in Your Life'

As a 19-year-old Dixie girl on the campus of the University of Southern California — with a full ride, a skyrocketing modeling career, a TV show on the red carpet, and a boyfriend handpicked out of an Abercrombie catalog — Alexis Jones appeared to have it all.  
 
She had put the dog days of riding to private school in her mother’s jaundice-colored, battered and bruised 1976 Dodge Malibu in her rear-view mirror. She’d moved beyond those early mornings stocking cheap beer and cleaning urinals at the local bar to earn extra money for her family.
 
No longer did she hide in the shadows of her former zip code in the grungy, rundown slums of Austin.

Alexis was a Beverly Hills sorority “chick” now — strutting with Texas-tomboy bravado, radiating with Southern-Belle charm.
 
“I had achieved everything the world says matters by my sophomore year in college,” she said. “I had the right guy, the right apartment, the right car, the right body, the right everything.
 
“I was living the dream.”
 
Reality, though, soon struck Alexis unexpectedly hard.
 
Standing outside on a sun-filled California afternoon — shooting the breeze with friends and making plans for the evening — she turned to find a quiet, unassuming girl from her Spanish class waiting to draw her attention.
 
Only eight words followed.   
 
“Alexis Jones, the girl with the perfect life,” she deadpanned with an overwhelming sense of clarity.
 
That was it. The quiet girl from Spanish class walked away — her mission accomplished.  
 
All Alexis could do was smile and run her hand through her long brown hair, trying to shrug off the five-second encounter as nothing to avoid public embarrassment among her friends.
 
But deep inside, where her insecurities had long wrestled with her conscience and her identity, she was rocked to the core. 
 
She made a beeline for her apartment and called home to Texas, immediately breaking into uncontrollable, mascara-smearing sobs and tears.  
 
She told her mother that she felt like a fraud — that she felt like she’d be lied to for her entire life. 
 
“I have everything. Aren’t I supposed to be happy?” Alexis questioned over and over again, pleading with her mother for an answer.  
 
And the woman who raised Alexis and her four brothers in Texas — working two jobs to keep the family above water — countered with a piece of advice that her daughter would never forget.
 
“As long as you live a life of mere consumption, not a life of contribution,” she explained, “you will never stand in the warehouse of joy.”
 
In an April visit to Brunswick, Alexis took Upper School students on her life’s journey since that day — when she began to define herself by serving others and by empowering young men and women to fight for something bigger than themselves.
 
After graduating from USC with a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations and a Masters in Communication Management, she launched I AM THAT GIRL — a non-profit movement inspiring girls to love, express, and be exactly who they are — in 2008.
 
“Its sole purpose is to remind girls that they are awesome,” she said.
 
The movement has more than 175 local chapters and has reached more than five million people, taking Alexis on a worldwide speaking tour with stops at the United Nations, the White House, Harvard Business School, ESPN, and NIKE.
 
And since January, she’s been on the road with a new message — ProtectHer: Redefining #Manhood — speaking to largely male audiences (hence, her visit to Brunswick) across the country about the ever-growing issue of domestic abuse and sexual assault on campuses.  
 
“It dawned on me that for the past 10 years, I had only been preaching to ‘half of the sky,’” she wrote on her website.
 
“The treatment of women is no longer a women’s issue or a women’s movement. It is a human movement. We just forgot to include the other half of humanity.”
 
Alexis doesn’t claim to be someone who’s reinventing the wheel — but rather someone who has a conversation with young men on behalf of their sisters, girlfriends, and moms.  
 
I’m not just asking you to respect the girls and women in your life,” she said. “I’m actually inviting you to participate and to be on the right side of history now.
 
“You’re not the problem. You’re the cure. You have the power to be a builder or a wrecker. You have the opportunity to encourage, to inspire, and to protect the girls in your life.
 
“There’s going to be a moment when you get to be a good guy.
 
“Be ready.” 
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Brunswick School Greenwich, CT

  • Upper School
    100 Maher Avenue
    Office: 203.625.5856

    Lower School
    1252 King Street
    Office: 203.485.3670
  • Middle School
    1275 King Street
    Office: 203.242.1202

    Pre School
    1252 King Street
    Office: 203.485.3652

Main Phone: 203.625.5800
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