Rasheda Kamaria Williams

Rasheda Kamaria Williams is an award-winning mentor, TEDx speaker and chief empowering officer for Empowered Flower Girl – a social enterprise on a mission to transform the way young people relate to one another.

Rasheda uses the challenges she faced as a teen as the springboard for her lifelong commitment to help young people cultivate their own personal power.

Growing up, she watched her father battle addiction and mother struggle to make ends meet. All the while, she was being ruthlessly teased and bullied at school.

When classmates called her “different” and “weird,” she could have let their words defeat her. Instead, she embraced her uniqueness and leveraged it to become the powerful woman she is today.

Rasheda is a graduate of Detroit’s Cass Technical High School and holds a B.A. in journalism from Wayne State University’s Journalism Institute for Media Diversity. She also has extensive training in youth development, community relations and interpersonal communication.

For more than 15 years, Rasheda has been committed to making a difference in the lives of women and children in communities throughout North America and beyond as a mentor, speaker and workshop facilitator.

In October 2016, Rasheda published “Be EmPOWERed: How to Live Above & Beyond Life’s Drama.” Written for and inspired by girls, “Be EmPOWERed” reveals Rasheda’s personal journey from excluded to empowered and how she got there with help from trusted adults, mentors, friends and ultimately herself.

Rasheda’s passion and advocacy for youth and social change have earned Empowered Flower Girl numerous accolades, including the Sisters Achieving Success Harmony and Empowerment (SASHE) “Top 10 Companies for Women and Girls” award. She was also named one of Everyday Power’s “29 Inspirational Female Entrepreneurs Who Are Positively Impacting The World” and featured in Exeleon Magazine as one of “15 Dynamic Entrepreneurs of 2020.” In 2021, MentHer magazine featured Rasheda in its “Top 20 Social Impact Founders” list. In 2022, she was named among Hope magazine’s Hope 25 and honored as a Community Icon by Esteem We/Detroit Possible.