Meredith Walker

Meredith Walker is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, the online community dedicated to helping young people cultivate their authentic selves. Since its inception in 2007, the organization’s website and YouTube channel have become destinations for inclusiveness, positivity, intelligence, and imagination. Walker travels near and far to promote the mission of Smart Girls, from serving as the journalism envoy for the U.S. State Department Bureau of Culture and Education’s mission, to spending time at the Al Za’atari and Emirates Refugee Camps, to visiting remote primary-care clinics on delegations to Haiti and Malawi.

Walker began her television career under the mentorship of legendary journalist Linda Ellerbee at Nick News. As a producer of that show, she traveled the United States interviewing kids for the Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning series. The experience became the foundation of her deepening interest in the lives of young people. She went on to serve as the head of the Talent Department for Saturday Night Live, where she quickly became close friends with Poehler. The two later joined forces to create Smart Girls, the result of their shared vision of an online community that encourages and celebrates girls who are experiencing adolescence.

Previously, Walker was a William J. Clinton Distinguished Lecturer at the Clinton School for Public Service. She was twice a guest of the Obama administration’s White House, both to host the Champions of Change for Computer Science Education summit and to serve as an expert panelist for The White House Summit: Breaking Down Gender Stereotypes in Media. Walker returned to Washington, D.C. for the first summit of The United State of Women, where she and Poehler served as co-panelists on the subject of “Revolutionizing Gender Norms.”

Walker has been named a “Profile In Power” finalist by the Austin Business Journal and “The Confidence Builder” by Austin Way. Tribeza Magazine called her “unapologetically, brilliantly herself” when naming her one of their 30 “Persons of the Year.” She was the September 2016 cover woman for Austin Woman Magazine.

Her appointments include the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders Advisory Council, the Common Sense Advisory Board for Gender Equality, the UN Women Global Innovation Coalition for Change (GICC), the CARE Action Advisory Council, and the ONE Girls and Women Advisory Board. She also teamed up with the Austin-American Statesman for her outdoor series Pocket Adventures and has been published by Poetry and Motto for Time.