Change Someone’s Life By Sharing What You Love: Amelia Brodka, Pro Skater and Non-Profit Leader
Today, meet the incredible Amelia Brodka, our third New Happy exemplar!
Amelia is not only one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met, but also one of the most inspiring. She is embodying our mission here at The New Happy with her work to take what she loves - skateboarding - and use it to help make the world a better place.
Amelia is a professional skateboarder who regularly skates with Tony Hawk and other legends. But on her journey, she discovered that there was a lack of support and opportunity available to female skateboarders. Instead of accepting that, she decided to fix it.
Her nonprofit, Exposure, is devoted to empowering women through skateboarding, and they do it in such an innovative way. First, they create opportunities for female skateboarders by hosting the world’s premier female competition every year in California. Proceeds from the event are donated to survivors of domestic violence. The event also hosts a vendor village with women-focused, health and socially-conscious companies. Exposure also runs the Skate Rising program to instill confidence and encourage compassion in young women: they bring young girls together to participate in skate clinics and engage in different community service projects.
I’m certain you’ll be incredibly inspired by her example and her work. She is a very special human, and I’m very grateful we got to learn from her!
I highly recommend following her on Instagram to see her mind-boggling skate skills in action, and checking out her organizations, Exposure and Skate Rising.
Here are the top three things I learned from Amelia:
Your passion is your gift to the world. Find a way to give it away to others, to use it in service of others, or to influence the world in a positive direction.
If a 76 year old woman can get on a skateboard for the first time at one of her clinics, I can do that thing I’ve been too afraid to try. (And you probably can, too!)
The skateboarding community is incredibly supportive: they celebrate one another, learn from one another, and push each other to grow. Having a community like that surrounding you can transform your well-being and your performance.
I’m so excited to share her words of wisdom with you all.
Hi Amelia! What does happiness mean to you?
I believe that you can't really achieve true happiness by just looking for your own experience of it. By sharing what you're passionate about - and everyone is passionate about something or skilled in something - you can connect with other people, create community, and contribute to that community.
I really feel like that’s what skateboarding is all about. Whether you’re contributing via a new trick, or by teaching someone else, or by just having a positive crew that you skate with.
Many people who are learning to skate think that skateparks are intimidating because you need merit or skill in order to participate in skating there. I always tell them that as soon as you go in there you will find people who are just willing to help you out because everyone had to start somewhere. Everyone knows what it feels to learn something new, and everyone is constantly learning something new from one another. It's very much a community where everyone contributes to each other's progress.
Tell us your story and what brought you to where you are today.
I grew up in Poland and my father actually entered the US visa lottery as a joke, and he ended up winning. He decided he had to take advantage of the opportunity, so he came out here and slowly brought us over.
It was definitely shocking to move here - I thought we were coming for summer vacation and I didn’t speak any English when we got here. It was challenging, but I'm grateful every day to have had that opportunity because I would definitely not be where I am today. I may have never even found skateboarding!
I fell in love with skating and decided I wanted to go to California and skate. There wasn't much support for women to pursue skating at the time and it wasn't as much in the mainstream as it is now. My parents, who had worked so hard to get us here, were saying, "You're not just going to go off to California, you got really good grades, you have to go to college.”
So I thought, "Well, I'll show you. I can get to California to skate if I get a scholarship to a college in California."
That driving ambition brought me to USC. While I was in college I took a lot of classes related to gender studies and gender portrayals in the media. That's what got me thinking a lot more about why girls and women aren’t better represented in skateboarding, despite its rise in popularity among women and girls.
And then, all of a sudden, the big events started cancelling all of the women’s competitions - which seemed like the only way that a female could pursue skateboarding professionally at the time. It was my dream to be a part of these events, and I couldn’t fathom how they could just take away my dream. And it didn’t make sense to me: I was seeing the growth of the amount of girls on skateboards and interested in skateboarding alongside a growth in the ability level of female skateboarders. I thought that perhaps the people running the industry just did not see what I was seeing.
That's where I came up with the concept for my documentary, Underexposed. I thought that if I showcased girls and women from around the world that were skating at such a high level, then it would start a conversation in the industry.
I created that documentary for my senior thesis, and it was so exciting when it came out. But then I realized, "Wait, there still aren't any events! You did this, and that’s great, but you need something more tangible."
That's when I came up with the idea for an Exposure event. It was originally going to be a one-off event. But I also wanted it to give back to our community. We wanted to empower women and girls and we wanted to do that through skateboarding, but also through giving back to survivors of domestic violence.
Our first event was in 2012. Through that event, I met a wonderful woman and philanthropist, Leslie Cohen, who had a background in propelling women's sports. She loved the event and the message and from that day we teamed up and created our non-profit, and here we are, seven years later!
Did you ever imagine when you were making the documentary that you’d be here in this spot today?
No. I couldn't have!
If somebody told me in 2012 that in seven years there are going to be 170 girls from all over the world coming to skate at this event, and a bunch of these pro women will have pro model boards, and be given the opportunity to skate and film and compete around the world, and they will be welcomed into the skate industry…
I couldn’t have. It just sounds like a too-perfect ending!
How did you conceive of Exposure and this venue for making a positive impact?
Before Exposure, I definitely made an effort to be a role model to other young women and girls who wanted to pursue something that might be deemed as masculine or something like that. But there wasn’t really a big outlet to share that more broadly - this was before social media, so there weren't ways to share what you were doing or feel like you might have the capacity to inspire others through any sort of exposure, so to speak.
When I saw the community that was growing around it, and how powerful it was, I just thought that there needed to be a way that these people could share what they are doing with others, because that would inspire so many other girls and women to not only skate but to just feel that they can be themselves and pursue whatever they want to pursue.
I definitely want to expand on what we do for girls and women getting in to skateboarding. There’s still so much opportunity to do more - we can really support women getting into it on the beginner and amateur levels.
We have about 70 girls that come out to our Skate Rising events which are part community service and part skateboarding. Every month we have the girls focused on a different service project. Sometimes it's making friendship bracelets for victims of bullying, sometimes it is writing empowering notes for the kids that are at the domestic violence shelter. Then they get to skate.
I’ve also heard from a lot of women who are older and want to learn how to skate, so we started some adult women’s clinics, which have been really well-received. We've had some women who are like 76 years old.
How does that feel - to see a woman get on a board because of what you're doing?
I feel empowered. All I can think is, "this is so amazing."
What do you think the relationship is between skateboarding and happiness?
To me, 80% of happiness about being in the present moment. Skateboarding is something that requires you to be so present and to stay in the moment. I think that's definitely a huge aspect of happiness. Especially because there are now so many distractions and so many things that pull you away from the present that it's just getting harder and harder to hold on to that. I've found that when I’ve been injured or healing, I have to find an activity that puts me in that present, flow state - I usually do a lot of pottery in those times!
The other important thing about skateboarding and happiness is the community. Even though there's a competitive aspect to the Exposure event, everybody is cheering each other on, even if they're neck and neck in terms of their placing. It’s so great to see other people get excited when someone else lands a trick. I’ve found that at a lot of the events people will cheer for the huge trick but also they'll absolutely, totally lose their minds if someone's dropped into the bowl for the first time. Because they acknowledge that it is a challenge for that individual and they've had to get themselves in to that moment of being present.
It seems like there is so much empathy and compassion in skateboarding.
Yeah, because we all go through the same journey. Maybe some people will learn faster than others but there is always a trick you’re trying to master that takes you an extra long time. You suffer some falls that are pretty uncomfortable but everyone in the park can relate to what it's like to try something, to make yourself do something that you're absolutely terrified of.
I think that is such a translatable thing that we could learn from the incredible skateboarding community - to remember how alike we are.
It's such a wonderful part of the experience. Everyone's getting together for the same purpose. They all love skateboarding and they're getting to meet other people from all over the world who all love skateboarding and have a relatable life experience to them being a female skateboarder. I feel like that creates such camaraderie and so I think everyone is excited for one another when they see them pushed beyond their comfort zone.
How did it feel when you were at the event recently and you looked around and saw all those women gathered from around the world?
It's amazing. It makes all of the craziness involved in the planning worth it.
I get to see these moments where a young girl meets her hero, someone she knows only from social media or the internet, and she gets to skate alongside of her. It’s so wonderful just to see that connection and that global community all come together for a day.
You’re an absolute exemplar of someone who has taken your passion and found a way to offer it to others. Do you feel that we all have a responsibility to give our gifts to the world?
Absolutely. I think that's why we get our gifts. I think that they bring us so much joy and if we can deliver that joy to someone else then not only will our own joy be magnified but someone else benefits and grows, too.
You can change the course of someones life for the better just by sharing something that you love. And it shouldn't really be a particularly hard thing to do. It could be as easy as just giving someone a pointer on how to do something or cheering for someone when they've landed a trick. Or even just saying something kind and supportive.
Do you have advice you would give to people who are looking to give their gifts to the world?
I would tell them to follow what inspires them and what they're passionate about. I feel like the natural progression of that journey will lead them there. Even if they are someone who has just mastered a particular craft, by sharing what you do, in your mastery you can help others. They'll see a video of you or a photo or your article or something like that and they'll just be inspired by that as it is.
I feel like the natural progression of those things, whether it's an art form or a sport or something more scholarly, is to share it. I think by following that passion, your inspiration will just naturally lead you there.
if you could ask the people of the world to do anything, and you knew that they would listen to you, what would you ask?
Say thank you more often.
As simple as that: I really think that could change the world.
Hard to think of more apt words than those two: I want to extend an enormous THANK YOU to Amelia for everything she does for women and girls, and for inspiring our community today!
Want to put Amelia’s wisdom into action?
Listen to her brilliant final words, and put them into action: say thank you twice as much as you normally would today.
How will you share what you love to change someone’s life? Take a few minutes right now and think about some of your passions, and how you might use them to positively impact someone else. Amelia is such an inspiring example to learn from.
Support Amelia and her mission of helping women and girls. You can donate directly to Exposure here.