ConnectUs Youth Spotlight EP 10 — (Maggie Sharpe: Growing Up Across Three Continents and Building for Girls Who Deserve More)

Woosung
3 days ago
4 min read

At seventeen, Maggie has already lived on three continents. She grew up in West Africa, is originally from the United States, and moved to Albania around six months ago. Now in her junior year, she is building a podcast, developing a community for displaced youth, volunteering at an English center, and managing two part-time jobs, an internship, and an ambassadorship alongside her coursework.

Living Across Three Continents

Although she is originally a U.S citizen, Maggie spent most of her life in Africa, due to her mother's job as a humanitarian worker in West Africa. When her mother relocated to Albania, Maggie came with her.

She has been homeschooled throughout, completing her coursework through online programs no matter where she lived. She says she typically finish schoolwork as early as possible in the morning, which gives her the rest of the day to focus on what she is building. Instead of leaving the time unused, she worked extensively, often staying up past midnight to balance multiple side projects, work, and part-time jobs.

Working alongside her mother's center in Africa left a clear mark on her. She describes it as one of the most formative experiences she has had. Families who had long been managing on their own finally had a place where they felt seen and supported. She says it shaped how she thinks about community and what it can do for people who have been carrying things alone.

Photo of Maggie instructing on one of her tutoring sessions

Why She Is Building Have the Audacity

Maggie's podcast, called Have the Audacity, was built to help girls step into the most "audacious version of themselves."

The word "audacious" can have a negative connotation. However, that boldness and courage, is what's lacking, and most needed in many places across the world. Growing up in the communities she lived in, Maggie saw firsthand what limited expectations do to girls.

"I grew up in a lot of spaces where girls were supposed to be married by the time they were 12. They weren't really given the opportunity to explore options in their career, or being an entrepreneur, or any of that."

That experience is what she wants Have the Audacity to push back against. The podcast is designed to give girls a space to learn, to see other people building things, and to connect with others who are ambitious and serious about their futures.

She is still in the building stage, with a goal to record her first episode in May. Her plan is to start with guests her own age who are not necessarily already doing big things, but who want to. The longer-term version vision is bigger. In the future, she wants to pair the podcast with a newsletter, a Substack, and challenges that allow listeners to step outside their comfort zones. Additionally, one thing she has not seen elsewhere and wants to build, is exclusive opportunities and internship connections delivered directly to her listeners through that aspect of community.

For outreach, she already has made much progress. She has even got reached out and got a reply from Mel Robbins, the motivational speaker and host of one of the most widely followed podcasts in the world, for how the podcast should be structured.

Adding on to what she had received on Mel's reply, she has also been inspired by Les Alfred's podcast "She's So Lucky," which centers on helping people create their own luck in their daily lives. What draws Maggie to it is how it feels to listen. Every episode, she says, feels like a letter written specifically to you. That is the quality she is working toward in her own show: not talking at listeners, but talking with them.

A Community for Displaced Youth

The second project Maggie talked about is newer, and still being shaped. She and a friend are in the early stages of building a community for refugees, displaced individuals, and young people living in conflict-affected areas, with a target audience of high school and college-age students.

The finding cause behind it is described clearly in how she described it.

"Whatever is happening around us, whatever stress we're going through, we don't become less ambitious. We just become hopeless. Because we're like, oh, I have no way to even achieve my goals because of all this."

The goal is to change that: to give students in those situations access to mentorship, opportunities, and pathways toward things like university scholarships. The model is primarily online, but she wants the impact to carry offline too. To achieve this, she is planning a solo trip to Egypt to meet with friends and do on-the-ground research to figure out exactly what shape the project should take.

Her Advice

Maggie's single piece of advice for any high schooler sitting on a big idea is to stop treating it as though it is out of reach.

"One piece of advice that kind of rewired my brain was essentially thinking about life as a game. We actually have a lot more control over our lives than we think we do."

Talk about your goals the way you would if you already believed you could achieve them, she says. She is honest about experiencing self-doubt around the podcast, wondering whether she will keep showing up after the first few episodes. But the reframe is what she comes back to: you have more control than you are giving yourself credit for.

What Is Next

Maggie is working toward the first episode of Have the Audacity this spring and is actively exploring various other projects and works, including the space for displaced youth.

Overall, it was very interesting to talk to her in this episode, since she had such a unique background of growing up in three different continents as a U.S. citizen. Upon talking to her, I realized she is the kind of person who builds things not because the conditions are perfect, but because she has decided the conditions are workable.

So thankful that she made time for this conversation, and looking forward to watching what she launches! :)

Tune in to the full episode of the ConnectUs Youth Spotlight, available on Spotify and across our social channels.