The CEO of the Girl Scouts Wants to Turn Today's Cookie Sellers Into Tomorrow's Powerful Female Entrepreneurs

Sylvia Acevedo wants every girl to know how to access -- and create -- opportunity.

By Stephanie Schomer • Apr 25, 2018

Sylvia Acevedo is used to being the only woman in the room. The engineer and rocket scientist spent the bulk of her career at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, along with stints at Dell and IBM, but she never doubted herself in those rarefied settings. That's something she credits to lessons learned at a very young age, taught by passionate leaders at the Girl Scouts. Now, as the CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, she's working to increase and expand STEM activities among members, improve outreach to minority communities and build strategic partnerships that will help set up Girl Scouts to become the entrepreneurs of the future, long after they've sold their last box of Samoas.

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