See Jane Do Everyday Women Doing Extraordinary Things
“Ever since I was a little girl I always felt that I had a global soul and a yearning to learn from women teachers around the world and to look at difficult issues and to see what I wasn’t seeing. What we need as women is for other women to be cheering us on and to say ‘I believe in you’ for us to have that confidence to go ahead and do that.”
Jensine (Yen-See Nah) Larsen is an award-winning social media entrepreneur, international journalist, and speaker. At age 28 she founded World Pulse – a digital communication network connecting women worldwide and bringing them a global voice – after working as a freelance journalist covering indigenous movements and ethnic cleansing in South America and Southeast Asia. Today World Pulse is powered by tens of thousands of women from 190 countries, many who are using internet cafes and cell phones from rural villages and conflict zones, collectively improving the lives of 2.2 million people. www.worldpulse.com
After successfully launching a print version of World Pulse magazine, in 2007 Larsen turned her eyes to the future of communications technology in the developing world. She pioneered an interactive global women’s newswire where women worldwide – including those using internet cafes and cell phones from rural villages and conflict zones– can speak for themselves to the world and solve global problems.
Most recently, Larsen has launched a new program that is training women in digital empowerment that is fostering a network of vocal women leaders from some of the most forgotten regions of the world.
Today women from virtually every country in the world are connecting through World Pulse and producing a multiplier effect of change. Women previously unknown by the global public are having their stories picked up from World Pulse by the BBC, CNN, the UN, and the Huffington Post and beyond. In addition, by networking through World Pulse’s website grassroots women leaders are finding job opportunities, starting new programs and businesses, launching women’s cybercafés, and finding international speaking opportunities that are changing their lives and lifting their communities.
With her finger on the pulse of women’s voices globally, Jensine is a Huffington Post columnist and sought after for inspirational keynotes, current affairs lectures, and radio programs. She has appeared on NPR and PBS and presented keynotes and panels at TED, Clinton Global Initiative, Social Good Summit, Nobel Women’s Initiative, Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship, Bioneers Global, Digital Earth, WebVisions, Women in Technology International, the Women’s Funding Network, NetImpact, and the Conference on World Affairs, to name a few.
Jensine has been recognized with several leadership awards including being honored as a contemporary woman spiritual leader by the Auburn Seminary with a “Lives of Commitment Award” following in the footsteps of Alice Walker and Jane Goodall. In addition, she was selected as a “Woman Who Inspires” by Donna Karan alongside such luminaries as Susan Sarandan, Fatima Bhutto, and Uma Thurman. Morgan Stanley-Smith Barney has selected Jensine as one of six “Next Generation Changemakers” under 40 in 2011, and a “Young Visionary for Tomorrow” by the SciFi Channel. The University of Wisconsin-Madison selected her as one of the top 10 social change leaders under 40 in 2012. In 2013 she was recognized as one of Rockefeller’s Top 100 Next Century Innovators.
Holding a degree in Comparative International Studies from the University of Wisconsin Madison (1999), Larsen is also a Young Leaders Fellow with the National Committee on United States-China Relations. She was appointed to Portland, Oregon’s Vision Committee, which was established by Mayor Tom Potter to chart the city’s 30-year vision by listening to the visions of its citizens. She serves on the Advisory Board for the Nobel Women’s International Campaign to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, Women Have Wings, Katerva International Sustainability Prize, and Ripples to Waves: A Stanford University program on Social Entrepreneurship and Development.
