GOTR is so much more than the 5K and the tutus, but wow that 5K brings tears to my eyes every time. In the end, it's really the power of the 5Cs that makes this organization so fantastic. I am proud to embody the powers of confidence, character, care, connection, competence, and contribution, even though I had to learn about it a lot later than our girls. Nothing like GOTR was around to build me up when the 9-year-old me was really struggling. I was a girl who didn't fit in. I had to find my self-confidence as an adult. As a SoleMate, though, I developed my fundraising competence. I had been connecting others into a fantastic network for years, but I had never really worked hard to fundraise consistently and build a reliable donor network. GOTR is such a great cause that it was easy to convert my friends into believers and then donors. 

When I started as a SoleMate, I knew I would have no difficulty raising the money for one girl's scholarship, but I also wondered if I could recruit gals like me to be SoleMates so we could all raise money for one girl. I knew my network was valuable, but WOW, did my friends ever come through! Some of them have now been SoleMates for years, raising so much money, but also have brought their own networks into the fold. At the same time, my passion and belief in what this organization could do made others commit to supporting not only one girl but a whole team and that is where we are building an entire community. I am hopeful I will have supported enough girls someday so that we will have an entire generation that will be heard, respected, and expected to lead. This is exactly the message I want the girls to hear - that if you are genuine, enthusiastic, engaged, and working hard, others will want to join you, and that success will lift you, as well as them, to do great things. 

I believe in paying all my gifts forward, and I believe that my success at recruiting SoleMates, raising money, and raising the GOTR Cincinnati profile is repaying that 9-year-old for sticking with it. Yes, I am competent now at using my network to support this amazing and necessary organization. I believe we are helping these girls reach their potential in a world that does not necessarily always see girls as having potential, but my super power is that I see the potential in every single one of them.

- Jenny O'Donnell, GOTR SoleMate and Committee Member