Today we’d like to introduce you to Kimberly Campbell.
Kimberly, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ve always been someone who is interested in people. I’m curious about what shapes us, how we understand ourselves, how we connect with one another, and what helps us become more of who we are. When I look back at my career, which has now spanned more than 20 years, I can see those questions running through so much of what I’ve done, even though the work itself has taken a lot of different forms.
Professionally, my background is in communications, nonprofit leadership, education, and organizational strategy. I’ve worked in the corporate world, in schools, and in nonprofits. I’ve led organizations and teams, built programs, advised leaders, and spent a lot of time helping people and organizations understand who they are, what they stand for, and how they want to show up in the world.
I’ve also had a deep commitment to women and girls throughout my career. Earlier on, I helped develop workplace initiatives around intimate partner violence. Later, I served as Executive Director of Exhale to Inhale, a nonprofit that brings trauma-informed yoga to survivors of domestic and sexual violence. My earlier graduate work in communications explored gender, power, and identity. These weren’t necessarily steps in some carefully planned path, but the same themes kept finding their way into my work. Identity. Voice. Agency. Helping women feel stronger in themselves and their lives.
A lot of that work was about empowering women to rebuild or reclaim something after they had already been hurt or had learned, in one way or another, to make themselves smaller. That work matters enormously to me, and it always will.
Then, during my graduate program in Applied Positive Psychology, I started looking at some of those same questions differently. I kept thinking about how much we do to help women and girls after they’re already struggling and wondering what it might look like to start earlier.
I kept coming back to one question. What if we didn’t have to wait until girls were struggling to help them understand themselves?
What if we gave girls the opportunity, before adolescence and all of the pressures that come with it, to really think about who they are? What if we helped them learn to understand and trust their feelings, recognize their strengths, appreciate their bodies for what they allow them to do, and practice using their voices while they’re still forming their ideas about themselves and their place in the world?
That’s how my most recent project, My Book of Me, began.
My Book of Me is a guided program I created for girls ages 8 to 10 focused on identity, voice, and self-expression. I first developed it as part of my graduate work, grounding it in research from positive psychology and related fields.
Girls at this age are thoughtful, funny, perceptive, and so capable of engaging with these ideas. They didn’t need me to tell them who they were. They needed someone to create the space for them to explore it for themselves. And research shows that this is the age when all of these ideas start to become ingrained and lay the foundation for how they move into adolescence and adulthood.
The program is offered on Zoom and in person. I’ve continued developing the program, created resources for caregivers, built small group and individual experiences, and created the brand and website. I’m now focused on bringing My Book of Me to more girls and families and building partnerships that can help the program grow.
It’s interesting because My Book of Me is something completely new that I’m building, but it also brings together so much of who I’ve been and what I’ve cared about throughout my life and career. Communication, identity, voice, connection, women and girls, and the belief that understanding ourselves can change the way we move through the world are all there.
At its heart, I want girls to have the opportunity to know themselves before the world gets louder. I want them to enter adolescence having already spent time thinking about who they are, what matters to them, what they’re good at, what they’re feeling, what their bodies do for them, and what they want to say. Most importantly, I want them to know that their own answers are worth listening to.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
The road has definitely not been smooth or linear. I think one of the things I’ve learned is that a meaningful life and career rarely unfold in a straight line, even when they might look that way from the outside.
I’ve had wonderful opportunities throughout my career, and I’ve also had periods of real uncertainty. There have been jobs that ended, organizations that changed, ideas that didn’t work the way I expected, and times when I’ve had to ask myself what I wanted to do next. I’ve had to reinvent myself more than once.
On a personal note, having experienced cancer about 10 years ago also changed the way I think about those choices. It made me much more discerning about how I spend my time and what I want my life to include. It brought a question into much sharper focus for me. We get one life, so what are the things I absolutely want to experience in mine? I don’t always know the answer, and it certainly doesn’t mean I’ve stopped worrying about making the right choices. But I think I’m much more willing now to pay attention when something feels meaningful or when I’m curious about where something might lead.
Going back to graduate school at this stage of my life was part of that. I wasn’t doing it because I had a perfectly mapped out plan for what would come afterward. I knew I was curious. I knew I wanted to learn. I knew there were questions about people, organizations, identity, and wellbeing that I wanted to explore more deeply. What I didn’t know was that one of those questions would eventually become My Book of Me.
Building something of your own brings a different kind of uncertainty. I care deeply about this program and believe in the research behind it, but believing in something doesn’t automatically tell you how to turn it into something sustainable. I’ve had to learn as I go. I’ve built the curriculum, tested and refined the program, listened carefully to the girls and caregivers who experienced it, created the materials, figured out the business side, built the website, and learned how to talk about something that feels very personal to me in a way that helps other people understand why it matters.
There’s vulnerability in that. When you’ve created something yourself, you can’t really separate yourself from it. Putting My Book of Me into the world means saying, “I made this. I believe it matters.” And then you have to let other people respond to it.
I also think there’s a particular kind of pressure that comes with starting something new later in your career. There’s an assumption that by a certain point you’re supposed to know exactly what you’re doing and where you’re going. My experience has been almost the opposite. The older I’ve gotten, the more willing I’ve become to follow the questions that genuinely interest me, even when I don’t know exactly where they’ll lead.
So no, it hasn’t been a smooth road. I’m still figuring parts of it out, and probably always will be. But I’ve become much more comfortable with the idea that uncertainty doesn’t necessarily mean you’re on the wrong path. Sometimes it means you’re building a way of being that didn’t exist before.
We’ve been impressed with My Book of Me, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
My Book of Me is a guided program for girls ages 8 to 10 designed to help them better understand who they are, recognize their strengths, understand and trust their feelings, appreciate their bodies for what they do, and become more comfortable using their voices.
In all of my research, I found programs that addressed pieces of this work, but I couldn’t find one that brought identity, body appreciation, feelings, strengths, and voice together for girls this age in an intentionally developmentally appropriate sequence, with each piece building on what came before it.
What makes the program different is that it isn’t about teaching girls who they should be or giving them another set of expectations to live up to. It’s about creating the space for them to discover more about who they already are and feel confident in that.
The program is grounded in research from positive psychology and related fields, but it is designed to feel nothing like school or therapy. The girls talk, draw, write, move, laugh, reflect, and practice. We explore identity, feelings, strengths, body appreciation, voice, and the people and resources they can turn to for support. Everything is developmentally appropriate and designed specifically for girls in this age group.
The age range is very intentional. Research tells us that some of the changes we often associate with adolescence begin much earlier than we once thought. One survey found that girls’ confidence drops by 30 percent between ages 8 and 14. From ages 8 to 10, peer influence and media exposure also become more significant. I chose this age because I want to reach girls while they’re still forming their ideas about themselves, rather than waiting until some of those pressures have already taken hold. My Book of Me gives them a chance to spend intentional time getting to know themselves during that period.
One of the things I’m most proud of is how the program respects girls as experts on their own experience. I’m not there to tell a girl that she’s confident or brave or that she should love everything about herself. I’m there to ask good questions, give her language and tools she can use, listen to what she has to say, and help create an environment where she feels safe enough to explore her own answers.
Caregivers are part of the experience too. I’ve created resources that help them understand what we’re exploring and continue some of those conversations at home without putting pressure on girls to share things they would rather keep private.
My Book of Me is currently offered through small group and individual experiences, which allows the work to remain personal and relational. I’m also beginning to build partnerships with organizations that share the commitment to helping girls develop a strong sense of self and voice.
What I’m most proud of, though, is what I’ve heard from the girls themselves. When I first facilitated the program, I watched them become increasingly willing to share, reflect, encourage one another, and talk about things that mattered to them. They began to recognize that other girls could be safe people to practice using their voices with. They listened to one another, encouraged one another, and created a space where it felt increasingly comfortable to speak honestly. I think there’s something really powerful about learning early that other girls don’t have to be people you compare yourself to or compete with. They can be people who listen, support you, and make it safer to be yourself. Girls this age are ready for these conversations. We just have to give them the opportunity to have them.
Ultimately, I want people to understand that My Book of Me isn’t about fixing something that’s wrong with girls. It’s about investing in what’s already there and giving girls the time, space, and tools to know themselves a little better and hold on to their fierceness before the world gets louder.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
I don’t know that I have one favorite childhood memory. Some of the things I remember most fondly are actually pretty simple. My dad was very funny, and I loved the moments when we were being silly and laughing together.
I also loved to read. Books were a real respite for me as a child. They gave me places to go, people to meet, and whole worlds to imagine, and I think they fed a creativity and curiosity that are still very much a part of who I am.
It’s interesting to think about that now in the context of My Book of Me. I didn’t create the program because of my own childhood, but I do sometimes think about the girl I was and know that she would have benefited from having a space like this. A place where she could explore who she was, what she felt, and what she wanted to say, and know that all of those things mattered.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.discovermybookofme.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimberlyhcampbell/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlyhcampbell
