Podcast: LiveGirl Founder Sheri West

This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to New Canaan’s Sheri West, founder of LiveGirl, about the nonprofit organization’s efforts to address a growing mental health crisis among young people and especially girls. An important part of LiveGirl’s plan includes a new partnership with Silver Hill Hospital to help train mentors. We plan to interview Silver Hill for next week’s podcast. Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

LiveGirl, Carriage Barn Open ‘She is Rising’ Art Exhibition

Two nonprofit organizations in New Canaan teamed up to organize an art exhibition celebrating women that opened Thursday. “She Is Rising,” presented by LiveGirl and the Carriage Barn Arts Center, runs through June 5 at the well-known gallery in Waveny Park. Sheri West, LiveGirl’s founder and CEO, said the exhibition reflects her organization’s work to “build confident, inclusive, leaders.”

“We’re working to close the female leadership gap, and we’re working to create a world where women can rise and take on positions of power and leadership,” West said. “She Is Rising” features artists such as Ashley Longshore, TL Duryea, and Michele Voight. The art, ranging from embroidery to paintings, makes “powerful statements,” according to Hilary Wittman, the executive director of the Carriage Barn.

Local Organizations and COVID-19: LiveGirl

For today’s Q&A with a local organization, we talk to New Canaan’s Sheri West, CEO and founder of LiveGirl. West shares with us some of the key spring and summer dates for LiveGirl, which also plans to mail more than 500 copies of its “Camp LiveGirl” activity book this summer. 

Here’s our interview. 

New Canaanite: You have a staff at LiveGirl. One of the things that we are hearing from nonprofits is that part of what is really hard right now is their revenue streams are eroding or disappearing altogether, at least for the spring. How are you all faring at LiveGirl? Sheri West: We have two full-time employees and we were fortunate to qualify for a payroll protection loan, though Bankwell, so we are very fortunate.

Podcast: Sheri and Olivia West of ‘LiveGirl’



This week on 0684-Radi0, our free weekly podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Sheri and Olivia West, the mother-daughter team behind nonprofit organization LiveGirl, and its terrific new podcast, “Confident.” This week’s installment is sponsored by Pryority Wellness, a holistic wellness center devoted to helping you maintain a lifestyle of optimal health, offering individual programs and services, such as wellness assessments & coaching, massage & energy therapies, pilates, meditation and more. For more information, visit Pryority Wellness at 45 Grove Street, above Halo Fitness or contact them at 203-594-1552 to book an appointment. Discover your path to wellness at Pryority. Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

‘At Home with Other Girls’: Local Nonprofit Organization LiveGirl Marks Five Years

Lola Duhov, 11, has participated in workshops and camps hosted by a New Canaan nonprofit organization for more than one year. The Stamford resident, a Scofield Magnet Middle School student, said that prior to getting involved with LiveGirl, she had been “a very not self-appreciative person and I’d always put myself down and thought I was never good enough.”

“So my mom signed me up for [LiveGirl] and I became so connected with it and in sync with everyone and it just made me feel like a better person, and I’ve learned to accept myself more and become a much more positive person,” Duhov said Wednesday from outside the New Canaan High School cafeteria, filled with laughing girls, all cheering and working together at a leadership workshop. Duhov is one of dozens of area girls who have benefitted from LiveGirl since New Canaan’s Sheri West founded the organization five years ago. Pronounced ‘Liv Girl’ with a short ‘i’—it’s named after West’s daughter Olivia—the organization’s goal “is to build confident leaders,” according to West. “Everything we do is to build self-esteem and social and emotional intelligence, which are the building blocks of a confident leader,” West said.