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LeadershipTrailblazers

WATCH: Girl Scouts CEO Anna Maria Chávez On Kicking Down Barriers for Young Girls

By
Valentina Zarya
Valentina Zarya
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By
Valentina Zarya
Valentina Zarya
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February 29, 2016, 7:30 AM ET
Earlier this month, Fortune Most Powerful Women launched “Trailblazers,” a new video series featuring conversations with women who have paved the way for others in their fields.
The second woman in our series is Anna Maria Chávez, the CEO of Girl Scouts of America. A native of Southern Arizona, she is the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants and the first Latina to run the Girl Scouts organization.
Sign up: Click here to subscribe to the Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the world’s most powerful women.
The former lawyer has helped turn the Girl Scouts into a twenty-first century organization. For the first time last December, Girl Scouts began to sell the iconic cookies digitally. In 2015, its young members sold 2.5 million boxes of cookies, or about $10 million worth, through a project called “Digital Cookie.”
Chávez talks to Fortune about how being a woman has influenced her career path, particularly about the female role models in her life: “My grandmother, who taught me at the very early age the importance of education because she never was able to receive an education, and my mother, who was one of the first women to run for public office in southern Arizona.”

 

Watch the first episode in the Trailblazers series, an interview with Lt. Gen. Michelle Johnson, the first woman to ever to lead a U.S. Department of Defense service academy.

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By Valentina Zarya
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