2023 Teen Vogue Summit Reflection
Disclaimer: This is not a full coverage of the event, this is a personal reflection. Please visit https://events.teenvogue.com/summit-dream-your-future to watch the live stream and learn more about the event.
Can you believe that this year we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Teen Vogue? That’s amazing, but that also makes me feel very old at the same time. I grew up reading Teen Vogue and I got to revive some old aspirations of mine when I attended the 2023 Teen Vogue Summit in Los Angeles, CA. This event hosted some of the biggest culture creators and change-makers in music, media, fashion, and culture right now, yet I felt like this was a very introspective experience for me. I graduated from high school in the class of 2013, and so I had an entire decade’s worth of reflections running through my mind between who I was in 2013 as a young person trying to find my place in the world and who I am today in 2023, still trying to find that same very thing.
The Teen Vogue that I grew up with was the 2009 Amy Astley era of Teen Vogue. I used to receive my monthly printed subscription in the mail (before everything went digital) and I tore out the pages I liked to add to the growing collage on my bedroom walls. I also bought the first edition of the Teen Vogue Handbook and I watched ‘The Hills’ just to see glimpses of Lauren Conrad’s and Whitney Port’s life interning at Teen Vogue under Lisa Love. This inspired me to apply to fashion school and I even got into FIDM as a high school junior, but then something really psyched me out about the world of fashion — I just felt sad because I didn’t see myself in it, or rather, I didn’t see someone like myself proving to my younger self that it could be done ten years ago.
I’m from Ventura Avenue. I shopped at thrift stores and I couldn’t afford the glamour that I saw portrayed in fashion magazines and reality television. Like was I actually going to make certain life decisions and career moves based on Lauren Conrad’s MTV fashion fairytale? First of all, art school is expensive. So I felt pressured to make the safer college decision and attended a state university because even all of the other famous Asian people at that time — like Lucy Liu, Jamie Chung, Randall Park — at least they all had Bachelor’s Degrees. So I just had to get college done. I don’t think I even wanted to be famous. I guess, I felt discouraged from pursuing a bolder creative path because I didn’t see more successful creative Asian people in the media that I consumed.
And so here I was, ten years later, reliving my high school dream at the 2023 Teen Vogue Summit with a press pass for Overachiever Magazine, and even though I did not pursue the fashion or media path I once wanted, I still felt welcomed into a space that I had closed the door to. Despite how I once felt, Teen Vogue isn’t just about fashion I can’t afford or celebrities I can’t relate to. I met some incredible editors and Overachievers at the event and it was nice to see that Teen Vogue has evolved to be more politically dynamic and socially diverse. The current Editor-in-Chief, Versha Sharma, is a South Asian woman who would have inspired my younger self to dream bigger because now I know that it’s possible for someone like me to become the Editor-in-Chief of a magazine. I didn’t realize how important visibility was, but it really is.
I learned from the conversation between Elaine Welteroth and Versha Sharma, the former and current Editors-in-Chief, to think about how you can bring more of yourself into the role — and that was assuring for me to hear right now because I felt like I have been personally struggling to find my footing as Overachiever’s new Editor-in-Chief. I have high expectations for what I want the platform to be yet not enough time between my current day job and creative side passions to execute my plan the way I want to. It’s not like an Imposter Syndrome of not believing that I deserve this or not, but it’s more like I understand the responsibility that comes with the role and the consequences of saying the wrong thing — which makes me question myself and wonder how to proceed wisely. Teen Vogue has evolved because someone like Elaine Welteroth brought more of herself into the role, and in this reflection, I’m trying to encourage myself to do the same at Overachiever Magazine.
The Teen Vogue Summit was full of other insightful and inspiring conversations, so I wanted to share some noteworthy quotes below from a few other Overachievers who attended the event. I had the pleasure to meet Aoki Lee Simmons, a model who has recently become both a cover star of Teen Vogue and a Harvard graduate before turning twenty-one (like no big deal) who spoke at the event with her mother, Kimora Lee Simmons. Then, I met Mia Lee, a Rise Global Winner ‘23 who created LingoX, a nonprofit organization that makes language learning more accessible by providing free lessons to underserved people, and spoke on a panel called ‘Elevating the Voices of Tomorrow.’ Then for a moment, I attended a panel called ‘The Power of Your Vote: Empowering the Next Generation of Leaders,’ and I learned about Deja Foxx, the founder of Gen Z Girl Gang.
On responding to backlash on social media
“Turn off your phone, touch grass” - Aoki Lee Simmons, Model, Writer & Activist
“And drink water” - Kimora Lee Simmons, Entrepreneur, Creative Director & Philanthropist
On financial independence
“Financial Independence is really high on the list of independences you must have — and it’s not about how much money you have, but how you use it… You guys cannot have full safety and control of your life if you do not have financial independence” - Kimora Lee Simmons, Entrepreneur, Creative Director & Philanthropist
On post-graduate life and passions
“I think sometimes from studying political science, I would look at the world and feel really upset with certain things, and so [I’m passionate about] social justice in a way that I can maybe use modeling and entertainment to be more than that… I’m passionate about bringing this fun side, the modeling side, the ‘I like to make goofy live streams’ side into something I can feel really good and solid about” - Aoki Lee Simmons, Model, Writer & Activist
On confidence
“Finding confidence is important to driving change… You have to be optimistic and believe in yourself” - Mia Lee, Rise Global Winner ‘23
“Passion can drive us ten times forward more than confidence ever can” - Rishi Ambavanekar, Rise Global Winner ‘22
On art and fashion
“Fashion is political. Art is political” - Versha Sharma, Editor-in-Chief, Teen Vogue
On getting started
“The problems we’re trying to fix are not problems we created… My how is just as important as my what” - Deja Foxx, Reproductive Rights Activist, Founder, Gen Z Girl Gang
On one hand, I’m so inspired by hearing from younger Overachievers like Aoki Lee Simmons, Mia Lee, and Deja Foxx speak about what they are passionate about and how they are changing the game for their generation. Then, on the other hand, part of me is wondering why it took me ten years to finally get to a place where I feel like I can start again, but this time, I’m leading an online platform that I’m not entirely sure how to use. Overachiever Magazine is about amplifying the voices of Asian women, non-binary people, and other gender minorities. Sure, I’m finding my voice, but I want this to be a conversation with other Overachievers and not just what I have to say. Mia Lee had a clever metaphor — to think of your voice as a soloist, but imagine how beautiful your sound would be if you were part of a band or symphony. Attending the 2023 Teen Vogue Summit was the friendly pep talk that I needed at this time to transform my hopelessness into a sense of hope.
After the event, I met up with Rita Phetmixay from Healing Out Laod, a community for Lao/tian people like myself to collectively heal from our intergenerational trauma — and I felt like I got to verbally process my thoughts and heal out loud by talking to Rita. We talked about our family refugee and immigration stories, our Lao/tian history, what’s happening around the world today (namely between Israel and Palestine), and how we can connect with our communities to respond to difficult issues, not just react or virtue signal. I admire Rita’s activism through Healing Out Laod because she has humbly reminded me of where I come from — Laos is the most bombed country in history from the US’ secret war in Laos — and so she has been using her platform to vocally stand up for Palestine. My hope for Overachiever Magazine is to have more open conversations with people like Rita about difficult issues because I cannot verbally process this on my own.
Those are my reflective thoughts at the moment and that kind of leads into the New Era Issue of OM. The current theme is really about dreaming of the future together, and I would like to encourage more people to participate in how we create the next era of Overachiever Magazine. I’m lucky to be in a place where I can start again and I’m passionate about creating opportunities for other Overachievers like my younger self to explore their creative skills in a meaningful way. I guess that I would have liked to see more encouragement and engagement on Teen Vogue when I was younger because there’s so much noise in the world and so many complex world issues that are too difficult to digest when you don’t even understand yourself, and to see only fashion and celebrities in the teenage media that I consumed was not the best thing for my mental health at an age where I had to make big life decisions — like picking the college I would attend or the career I would pursue. I’ve had to break my own heart to dream smaller, but now, I’d like to encourage myself and anyone else reading this to not be afraid to dream a little bigger. Now, I feel like I could be the next big thing or the future Editor-in-Chief of Teen Vogue.