When Rachel Doyle's grandmother passed away she wanted to do something to honor her, so at the age of 17 she started what is now GlamourGals. She gathered a group of her friends to go to a senior citizens’ facility, where they gave the female residents facials and makeovers in an effort to make them feel beautiful and rejuvenated. “I was honoring my grandmother’s memory while providing a community service that was relevant to what teenage girls like, too,” says Doyle, now 26 and living in Los Angeles.
A New York Times reporter covered that first event, and eventually word spread all the way to Oprah, who actually called Doyle at her high school and invited her on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The next year Doyle graduated and enrolled at Cornell University, where she created a business plan for her organization and incorporated it as a nonprofit.
With all the press she garnered, people began to contact her to start their own chapters of GlamourGals. When Doyle left for college there were five chapters; by her senior year there were 35, and today there are more than 50. Doyle continues to inspire young women through national leadership training events and interactive workshops, all building on skills the young women can apply to their local chapters. “I didn’t know at 17 that it was so relevant, but in the next 20 years, our country’s [population] will be the oldest it has ever been in the nation’s history,” says Doyle. “We’ve addressed a concern that is now going to be a national issue.” Visit glamourgals.org
