This month for Friends Book Club, in celebration of Women’s History Month, we are reading Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement by entrepreneur, activist and current Harvard student, Nadya Okamoto. On March 23rd over Instagram Live, our fave bookworm, Alexis Patterson, will be in conversation with the author herself as well as comic extraordinaire, Mary Beth Barone. Definitely pick up a copy and join us! This book was selected as one of Kirkus Reviews list for Best Young Adult Nonfiction of 2018, and we can’t help but remember sinking into Judy Blume’s novels to finally hear someone talk without shame about periods. Period Power aims to explain what menstruation is, shed light on the stigmas and resulting biases, and create a strategy to end the silence and prompt conversation about periods.
Can we get a hell yes!?
[Most images below pulled from Nadya Okamoto's website nadyaokamoto.com]
Here are 6 Cool Things about Nadya Okamoto to get you in the mood for this month’s reading.
1. Nadya Okamoto is the Founder of PERIOD (period.org), an organization fighting to end period poverty and stigma that she founded at the age of SIXTEEN. Under her leadership as Executive Director for five years, PERIOD addressed over 1.5 million periods and registered over 800 campus chapters in all 50 states and 50 other countries.
2. In 2017, Nadya ran for public office in Cambridge, MA at age 19 — at the time, becoming the youngest Asian American to run.
3. Nadya is also the former Chief Brand Officer and current Board Member of JUV Consulting, a Generation Z marketing agency based in NYC.
4. She has been recognized on the lists of Forbes 30 under 30, Bloomberg 50 “Ones to Watch” and People Magazine's Women Changing the World.
5. In November 2020, Okamoto launched August, a lifestyle period brand, which she co-founded with Nick Jain, the founder of JUV Consulting.
6. She has a new podcast called Tigress, of which she says, "This is my unedited and rather unfiltered reflection on where I find myself right now -- a work in progress, channeling my inner tigress."
And did we mention she’s only 22 years old? Holy moly! We can’t wait to see what she does to make this world a better place. She’s gotten one hell of a start. Are You There, Goddess? It's Nadya, and she has some things to say in her striking debut, Period Power. To say she is "one to watch" is an understatement.
Join us on March 23rd for a conversation that is sure to provoke much thought and inspiration.
