Zoë Jenkins

Zoë Jenkins is a 20-year-old practicing empathy and reimagining education for democracy. She is a senior advisor for the Kentucky Student Voice Team, where she founded and produced the Get Schooled podcast. For her work elevating the voices of Kentucky’s least-heard students, she was named a 2020 National Geographic Young Explorer.

In 2020, she founded DICCE, an organization creating curriculum and resources for Generation Z to utilize empathy to create equitable and anti-racist systems, in response to her high school’s shortcomings in creating inclusive environments. Zoë also served as the inaugural Chair of the Civics Unplugged’s Steering Committee and supported organizations including Schmidt Futures, Search for Common Ground, and Meta to empower Generation Z as civic innovators.

Zoë has facilitated workshops with Stanford University faculty and The Nobel Peace Prize, been featured in The Washington Post and NPR’s All Things Considered, and was named a 2021 Aerie Changemaker and 2022 Harvard Institute of Politics Emerging Leader. She also is an associate editor of The Allstate Foundation’s Leveraging the Potential of Youth Service Report. Zoë is a fourth year at the University of Virginia studying Youth and Social Innovation and Political and Social Thought where she studies at the intersection of democracy, community, and education and elevates the power of storytelling and dialogue through her leadership in the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society, the oldest student organization at UVA.