Passion Project — Global Women's Voices

Choosing their senior Horizons project, Kathleen Nguyen ’22 and Phuong Tran ’22 wanted to pair their passion for lifting women’s voices with helping students find theirs.

The solution was “Blossom 11,” a monthly podcast created to do both while also bringing awareness to issues of gender inequality from a global perspective. To tackle the initiative, they enlisted ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) II students, who embraced the opportunity to speak up and share their perspectives.

Kathleen and Phuong mentored the Blossom crew, which included Amber Feng ’25, Ivy He ’23, Jacey Li ’23, Vy Nguyen ’23, Craye Yan ’24, Lily Yao ’24, Ruby Yao ’25, and Jessica Zhu ’24. The team met weekly to brainstorm topics, refine ideas, develop interview questions, outline episodes, and record the podcasts. They interviewed peers and MHS adults, collecting as many perspectives as possible, while also sharing their own viewpoints.

For their first podcast in January, Blossom 11 explored beauty standards. “The goal was to provide a more diverse understanding of beauty standards by collecting perspectives from different countries, ages, cultural backgrounds, and experiences to paint a diverse picture of beauty: what it is, how it affects our society, and how its definition is constantly evolving,” explains Phuong.

Episode 2 discussed women’s education, its history, and why it matters. Episodes 3 and 4 tackle the Representation of Women in Music & Media.

“The overall focus is on women’s representation and women’s voices, with a concentration on global perspectives,” notes Kathleen. “The idea grew out of projects that tie into the ESOL class, and we thought that doing a podcast would provide students with practical application of vocabulary and grammar and help them develop confidence in their language skills.”

You can find Blossom 11 podcasts on Spotify. You can also follow them on Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/blossom11.podcast/.

Be on the lookout for future episodes!