Meet Sarah Lesko

 

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sarah Lesko. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sarah below.

Hi Sarah , you’ve got such an interesting story, but before we jump into that, let’s first talk about a topic near and dear to us – generosity. We think success, happiness and wellbeing depends on authentic generosity and empathy and so we’d love to hear about how you become such a generous person – where do you think your generosity comes from?

I had a very nontraditional childhood. My parents self-identified as “hippies” and divorced when I was 4 years old. My sister and I bounced back and forth between my mom and dad for the duration of our school years, and my dad didn’t have any real jobs. He sold marijuana that he grew in our house and yard, picked fruit seasonally, and sometimes left for weeks at a time to do other unknown jobs. My mom started work as a GS-3 (lowest government pay scale) in the Forest Service when I was in kindergarten, and worked her way up. So my sister and I relied on kindness and charity to get our needs met: the kindness of neighbors who fed us, the kindness of teachers and counselors at school to give us a supportive word, the kindness of church congregations, and the governmental services of WIC and welfare. I know that wealth and even financial stability are not moral attributes, as much as I know that poverty is not deserved. We are all products of our environment. And so it is my duty and also my joy to give back as much as possible now that I have been blessed with financial stability and the ability to control my time in my adult years.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

As the Executive Director of the 501c3 non-profit Bras for Girls, I get to spend my days advocating for girls and their right to move their bodies comfortably. I am a trained family doctor with a public health degree, but felt frustrated by my inability to help coach healthy behaviors in my clinical practice. Ironically, I feel more able to affect health in my current work.

Bras for Girls is dedicated to keeping girls in sports and promoting healthy life outcomes. Research has identified that lack of a sports bra and breast-related concerns are reasons that girls turn away from physical movement. Bras for Girls addresses that insufficiency by donating sports bras and breast development education booklets to girls in need, targeting the ages of 10-14, when girls are most likely to turn away from sports due to discomfort with their changing bodies. By normalizing body changes and providing necessary equipment, Bras for Girls supports girls’ relationships with body movement for life. We have donated over 90,000 sports bras to date (on track to give out over 50,000 in 2024 alone).

I am currently most excited about our collaboration with PE program educators. We have reached out to all Title 1 Middle School PE teachers in WA state, and are working to provide all of the girls in their programs with a well-fitting sports bra. So far, these teachers have indicated that >65% of the girls (aged 10-14) in their classes do not have a sports bra – an impactful targeted intervention. Once we can prove our collaborative model, we are hoping to expand this outreach to all states. Dreaming big!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I don’t think there is one magic pathway for life. We just have to do the best we can at the time we are living it. The experiences that shaped my life are different than the experiences of others. I would just tell people to:
1. Don’t worry alone. Find mentors, friends, trusted advisors who you can turn to for counsel.
2. Follow your instincts. When you are interested in something, follow that path! See where it leads you.
3. Time is your most valuable resource. Be careful what you say yes to – make sure whatever it is captivates your attention.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

In running Bras for Girls, I’ve been able to develop leadership skills that I didn’t learn in my medical life. The book Measure What Matters by John Doerr introduces the concept of Objectives and Key Results – and how to track them. I’ve been lucky to have the mentorship of a business consultant to help us create a Road Map and Growth Chart for our organization – every week we have a fully staffed, 100% transparent review of all of our goals, objectives, and checkpoints along the way. This tool keeps us on track, keeps us aware of what everyone else is doing, and how we are working together to meet our goals. Hugely instrumental.

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Image Credits

David Jaewon Oh, Jess Barnard, Maddy Lee, Jessica Morrow, Rebecca Mehra

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