Empowered by You
By Natalie Newton (’14)This spring, current Delta Chi third years Karen Pozo and Erin Wainwright began the first-ever Ambassador Program for the Empowered By You luxury lingerie line. Twenty percent of the proceeds of all Empowered By You sales go towards the Seven Bar Foundation to help fund microfinance loans for women in impoverished nations throughout the world. These loans allow recipients to become entrepreneurs by starting or growing a small business and breaking the cycle of poverty. Empowered By You founder Renata Black hopes that the line will allow women to use lingerie as a tool of empowerment for both themselves and other women. As directors of the Ambassador Program, Erin and Karen have worked closely with Renata to kick start the Ambassador Program at UVA and are working to develop a template to expand the Empowered By You Ambassador Program to other universities in the future with the mission of shifting paradigms and empowering women. So far they have recruited ten UVA women, four of whom are Delta Chi Thetas alongside Karen and Erin, as Brand Ambassadors and plan to continue growing the program next fall. In the third week of April, the Empowered By You Brand Ambassadors held a trunk show at Duo, a clothing store located on Elliewood Avenue on the Corner, to introduce the UVA and Charlottesville communities to the Empowered By You line. They hope to continue efforts to raise awareness around UVA as the Brand Ambassador program grows.
