More Than Enough: Building Confidence & Creating Leaders with Dr. Vee Kativhu, UN Global Youth Leader

What if the key to leadership wasn’t about having it all figured out, but believing that you’re ready to begin?

This episode is all about building confidence, trusting your voice, and creating space for young people to step into leadership, especially when the path isn’t clearly marked. We dive into how clarity, courage, and lived experience can become powerful tools for making a difference.

Whether you're working with youth or navigating your own leadership journey, this episode is a reminder that you don’t have to wait to be ready, you already are.

Transcript

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Music.

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Welcome to a new type of conversation with each episode, we'll meet with inspiring people sharing best practices at the forefront of creating change for our young people, we'll talk motivations that make a difference in how their lived experience can help empower us to take action and make a difference in the lives of young people where we live. My name is CJ Sturmer, and this is the champions for you podcast.

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Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you didn't quite feel like you belonged, or wondered how to step into leadership when the path wasn't clearly marked. In this episode, we sit down with Dr V KTVU, a United Nations Global Youth leader, educator and founder of empowered by Vee. We talk about what it really takes to create opportunity, build confidence and lead with purpose. From navigating higher education as a first generation student to becoming a voice on the global stage, her journey is packed with real insight for anyone working to make a difference, no matter where they start. We'll talk about how young people can find their footing while pursuing education or entering professional spaces, why confidence and clarity are tools for success, and how public health can be more effective when it meets young people where they are. This episode is a powerful reminder that empowering young leaders isn't about fitting in, it's about showing up, prepared, connected and ready to contribute. I want to talk a little bit about empowerment by V. What was the motivation? Why was that so important for you to create? So for me, empowered by V began as a idea in my head when I began doing social media at university. I just gotten into Oxford University. It was this incredible school that so many people around the world would come and visit just to take a picture outside of our libraries, just to be in the same space as the young people learning there, let alone actually getting in and attending. So when I got there, I looked around and I was like, So you're telling me that future Prime Ministers, people who run the UK, they tend to have gone to the school. So that means for you to be a leader in this country, you need to have gone to the school. But when I'm looking around the school, no one looks like me. No one sounds like me. No one at the table is representing me. So what message are we sending and going back home? Everyone's like, what do they eat over there? Is it lobster? Do they like wear Harry Potter? Girls, the questions were never about the actual education itself, which people from my area were very equipped and talented to do. It was always questions about how you would feel and what the environment was like. And that bothered me, because I thought, What message are you sending about what intelligence means? So got my little camera, put it on the window sill, and I began vlogging and talking about my experience being a YouTuber, showing people you can be unapologetically yourself and still thrive in a space like this. Like your background shouldn't be the determinant of, are you capable or not? Talent resides everywhere. So when I began doing that, naturally fell into okay, I'm now. I've got 500 young people who are subscribing. They're feeling the energy. They're like, Yeah, you're right. I need to take my power back. I am going to apply for that school, even though I'm living in a home where there's three siblings in one room, the boiler is not working. I'm helping with childcare. That shouldn't be a determiner of whether or not I will dwell in that place. We're having this fired up group of young people who wanted to show the world that their talent still mattered despite their background. And when that was happening, I thought, wait a minute, people want more. They want me to now, look at their personal statement. They want me to Now, check out what school they want to attend, because Oxford then became this representation of whatever a young person was aspiring for. So I kind of became this like symbol of like Youth Hope, you know, by accident. So I thought, Wait, I need to read that. And I'm a student, I'm gonna be broke if I take out 80 students for coffee, one at a time to talk to them about so let me just have an event. Let me have this one off event, like a meet and greet. They can come in, we'll talk, and that will be it. And I was talking to my best friend, who happens to be Malala, and I was like to her, what do I do? Like you've been running the Malala Fund for a while, and you know how to do this kind of work. How do I navigate this? She said, You need to get other young people who've also walked a similar journey to you, because even though you're great, you might not resonate with someone else. So you need to have at least different voices, faces, get them together, put them on the panel, get the young people in the room, have an exchange of ideas, right? And I was like, but what would I call it? Like, I just, I don't know. And she was like, you keep going back to the word empowerment. Like, just call it empowered by V. And I was like, I can't put my own name in. Like, it feels weird because it's them empowering themselves. She was like, I ran the Malala Fund. And I was like, well, case cost, like, how are you gonna How are you gonna argue that? I was like, You know what, you're right? And that was the birth of it. And every year since, for the past six years, we have a flagship event annually where it's an exchange of ideas. It's young people who've gone through that, and now I look at what I've been able to do, because in order.

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Reflection of where you begin, where you it's a beautiful story. Like, don't feel ashamed or embarrassed of your start because it wasn't picture perfect. No, you're still good enough, you're still talented, you're still worthy of it. And this is how so I'll have young people come to me and say, I've only been working in McDonald's for the past two years. Like, that's not a Harvard student. I'm like, Yes, it is. So what we do it in powered by V we take their heart, their McDonald's story, and we turn that into a Harvard application. Because you're learning innovation, you're learning teamwork, you're learning how to deal with angry customers like that. You're doing a lot, but you're just not wording it properly. So replace the word McDonald's with ours in a team set. You know the language that they understand at Harvard, but your experience is good enough. We just need to speak their language, that's it. So these young people are coming in thinking, I don't have to go do extra. I am good enough as I am. I just need to learn how to write about it. Where you are is fine. We just need to tweak that and make sure that they understand that and they see you for exactly who you are. That's it. So that's what empowered by V that's what we do. We just are there to support, give free resources, conferences, get the energy going, connect, mentor, all of that stuff. That's it. You constantly make me feel empowered, taking a moment. It's just It radiates off of you. And I continue to have this moment to where I just have a humbling, grateful moment that I talk to somebody with such advocacy and such voice and such passion and such good ideas that we know are working, that it makes me feel like I have an opportunity. I'm 40 years old, and I'm still a youth and young at heart to so many people, and that even I, at my age as an adult, still have the opportunity to go above and beyond. I tell this story about I have an MBA fee, and before that application, I was like, What am I doing? Going back to school at 3638 years old, I could never do that. I can't afford that. I'm a trailer park kid, and to hear you sort of speak. It reminded me of when I talked to my grandmother and I told her about this, and I remember she looked at me while she was on oxygen during Thanksgiving, and she said, I think you'd be an idiot if you didn't at least try. And that was a moment where someone that was important to me and my maternal figure was like, Are you kidding me? With this questioning yourself, she was empowering me, and it just it reminds me and how you're speaking and even speaking today that I've even had the opportunity, and I wasn't even framing myself right in my late 30s. So there's always an opportunity. I just, I wanted to take that personal moment that you were really helping me to reflect on being a better me. And I think that that's really, oh my god, I'm gonna get emotional. It's just like I I'm very humbled by my experience with you and get it and getting to know you. And I love that your grandma said that, because it's true. A lot of young people come to me and they say exactly what you're saying. Of I should. Why should someone like me even bother trying to apply for something like that? Because I know they're gonna reject me. I know I'm not good enough, and I know and it's like you will miss 100% of the shots that you don't take, and how dare they make you feel imposter syndrome, when, if anything, you're the person who shouldn't the fact that you've jumped through that many hoops, that you're starting with that background, and you still have that determination and passion to pursue your education, pursue that knowledge, to still put yourself out there. And you get in, and now you're sitting in that room and you're doubting yourself. What like and it's not a reflection of you, because imposter syndrome, people make it sound like it's a you thing, like you are just not feeling good enough. No, the systems around us are sometimes designed to make us feel that way. And the fact that you still overcame, overcame and gotten in that room, you better own it. You better take up that space. You better let them know you're there, because how dare anyone try to dim your light? Period like, How dare that you you're just as human as anybody else, and you deserve a chance at, like, fighting for what you want, no matter what field or Lane it's in. And that's what we do with our students empowered by V we're simply there to to tell them, like, just try it. Just try it and let the rest happen. We will then help you figure out. Scholarships will help you figure out. But the initial that self belief that is something that you're gonna have to guard and protect and invest in and carry with you through life. Because whether it's 3840, whether it's 1216, the world will try to bring you down that level of bubble of protection, talking to yourself kindly, telling yourself you're worthy, telling yourself you deserve it, that I feel like is one of the first steps, because then when you're hearing that noise, you'll be like, well, I know you're not talking to me. I always tell people like someone on the internet tries to come to me and say, V we think you're ugly. Genuinely, I can't even receive it. I'm like, Are you having a bad day? Are you okay? Because I know you're not talking to me. There's no way, because the bubble of protection I've put around myself when it comes to your beautiful you're kind. You deserve it. When you get the accolades, you better enjoy it. By the time someone tries to come to me with like, it just bounces right back. It's like, I'm so sorry. Like, I do you? Rita descender, Yeah,

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take that address, unknown. How dare and sometimes.

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We talk to ourselves in the worst of ways, we will look in that mirror critique ourselves. You're not good enough to do that. MBA, you're not good enough to do this. How dare you even think? And it's like you wouldn't talk to your worst enemy like that. Your little sister comes to you and says, I'm dreaming of doing it. You wouldn't dare say some of the stuff you just said to yourself when you're trying to the application, right? But yet, we do it to ourselves. So I always start with that self empowerment with my students to be like before we even get into looking at the application for Harvard, I need to make sure that we are arming you with that armor of self love, whatever we can do, then we go and take on the world. Yeah, you know, is there a specific memory or a moment that sticks out in your mind that maybe even is motivating you, that you say, Wow, okay, I'm actually making a specific difference based on what this person has told me. Do you have a moment like that? Oh, yeah, for sure. And I'll always say, my mom, right? Like my mother. I feel like, if you look in that dictionary, she is the embodiment of empowerment without her even like being able to describe it or know it like she's always very shy. She's like, I've got nothing of value to say to me. I'm like, you don't even realize the extent of the imprint or impact you've had on me. Because growing up, she was always so grateful for what she's got, and always knew how to flip a situation and find the good in it, glass half full, not half empty. She just taught me how to to get the most out of whatever is happiness. So that idea of now taking my students and saying McDonald's, that's Harvard, I'm like, Oh, wait, this is stuff that I heard from my mom growing up all the time, being able to reframe it. And that's something that I see myself telling my students all the time, like, your beginning is not going to mark your end. Like, why are you looking down there? Like we don't we can't afford the clothes that the people at Oxford wear we can't afford, no change that you can't afford the clothes they wear, and yet you're still running circles around them. You didn't have the same level of education they had. And yet look at you, how do you reframe it? And I know that began for my upbringing. I know that for a fact. I know it for a fact. We talk a lot about the intersectionality of health and what we do. And yes, it's awareness of building and prevention building with a variety of topics, but something that we try to promote in many different ways is understanding that these things are not in silos, right? Empowerment is not a silo, and that we have to look at a whole person Absolutely. And so when thinking about intersectionality like we're in terms of health and what you do and the empowerment, I think you bring up, actually a really great question, how do we empower people as an advocate for youth voices, how do we make sure that there is empowerment for youth?

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I mean, that's a pretty difficult question, but I think it's when you're creating the information that you're going to disseminate. Like, what kind of language are you using? Because I think sometimes there's an over complication of when it comes to health, people feel like, I can't even, I can't even pick up that public I won't understand it. It's going to be full of jargon. It's going to be if you're going to go into a local community where there's a lack of funds anyway, and people don't have access to health care and stuff, and you're coming into bringing your leaflets, are they actually number one lessable in the language that you're using? Like, you're able to to just simplify that even further, just hope someone has an access point before they can even into the technicalities. Are you making affordable, like, whatever you're suggesting to me? Am I going to read this and just know now there's a problem, but I actually can't afford the solution, you know? And it's just, it's just so difficult. It goes back to having the youth at the table and asking them, what is it that you need? And when you realize what they need, you realize where you need to better allocate your budgets. You realize where you're maybe miss spending, because if young people are asking for a specific thing, but yet, you've over invested in this other area, and you're like, Well, young people don't care. We did invest in something for youth, and they didn't come. We invited them. They didn't show up. Was it actually what they needed, though? Because I'm not going to show up something that I don't need I can't access that's not useful. You have to have that Caucasian, right? You made a good point. Language. So it's something that's so simple of just asking and they're not showing up. Okay? Why? Why? Yeah, there are moments sometimes when I'm at the UN even at this point in my journey where I've been with them for a while, I'm sometimes like, What are you talking about? Just pause. Can we just remove all that fluffy language? Just tell me. What are you trying to say in simple terms. Because as much as you think you're including involving me. Now you're speaking a language I can't understand, and it sometimes feels why do we do why do we over complicate things? Let's just boil it down, invite me in, because maybe I actually don't know the language you're using. But now when you say, I'm like, that's what you're trying the whole time. That's what you were trying to say. But they just speak in jargon and different words that just I don't know. I don't know. It's not accessible language. It's not the day that I finished my thesis and I finished my PhD, I'm going to have a version of it that's not so technical. Because, yes, when I'm talking to my PhD committee, you get what I'm saying. I get what you're saying. I can use that language. You can get so technical and high level, but when I'm now giving it for people to access and read and understand.

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And let's make a different version, because then when you finish with that and you want to dive even further, fine, there's a space for that. But meet me where I'm at. Meet me where I'm at. We're living in a world where young people are consuming most of their media and news online, on bite sized chunks, and it's great. I'm taking it in. So if that's like where you're meeting me at when you're now bringing me this report, I'm not reading that, you know, I'm not reading that, then you're gonna say, Oh, they don't care. I do care. But make that digestible. I was talking to four high school youth earlier, and they said it's a very kind of similar thing. Is just talk to me like an adult, like you don't need to talk to me like a kid or saying a specific way. Let's just talk like adults. Yeah, just talk to me. It's human interaction, isn't it? Yeah, it is. We. Thank you so much for continuing to make us feel empowered. We have the opportunity we can do more in a variety of ways, and for being such a great voice and promoting advocacy for youth to not only be at the table, but to have a voice and to be included and to actually get what they need. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thank you for having me and keep on doing the work you guys are doing. If you're watching this, I assume you're in this world, in this space, and the very fact that you're engaging with it is really, really great. So please keep on going and never be afraid of learning, of diving in or getting uncomfortable with these issues, because that means that we're moving it means that something's happening and it's okay to be a student of life. You heard it first. Keep going. Thanks for you. What a great reminder that Leadership isn't about where you start. It's about showing up with purpose and helping others to do the same. Thanks again to the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth and prevention connections for the support. And be sure to go to the website and check out other programs that we offer@vfhy.org

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and since we're a few episodes in, we'd love to know what you think and give us that five star review while you're at it. Go ahead and share it with others. The only way we can make real changes if we're doing it together. And as we say around here, no matter what you do in this world, go out there and go do good. Thanks everyone. We'll see you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai