Tammy Tibbetts is a social media expert, non-profit founder and NYWICI scholarship success story — and she’s only 25. In her day job, Tammy is the social media editor of Seventeen.com, where her Internet savvy has netted the magazine more than one million Facebook fans and nearly 300,000 Twitter followers. Tammy is no stranger to the Hearst family. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from The College of New Jersey, Hearst Magazines hired her as their youngest website editor. In her early days with the company, she launched two sister sites to Seventeen: MyPromStyle.com (now Seventeen.com/prom), and MisQuinceMag.com, for Latinas celebrating their quinceanera or 15th birthday.

After hours, Tammy dedicates her time to She's the First, the non-profit organization she founded in 2009 to raise money for girls' education in developing countries. Her philanthropic work has raised more than $23,000 to sponsor girls' educations, with much support coming from the Girls Who Rock concerts that she co-founded in 2010. Her non-profit work was recognized at Glamour's 2010 Women of the Year Awards. Fittingly, the NYWICI Glamour Ruth Whitney Scholarship is one of two that Tammy won, and she served on NYWICI’s Foundation Board. Levi's also named Tammy a Social Change Ambassador in its Shape What's to Come Campaign, and she is a contributor to the Huffington Post's Impact section.

Tammy's most recent honor: She graced the cover of the October issue of Folio magazine as one of its 2011 13 Under 30.

You're not only a two-time scholarship recipient, but also an active NYWICI member, having attended the annual Career Conferences and other events, and serving on committees. How has your involvement in the organization advanced your professional goals?
For me, the NYWICI scholarship was more than a check to my university — it introduced me to a sisterhood! Receiving the Glamour Ruth Whitney Scholarship in 2005, and a second scholarship in 2006, not only prevented me from having any college debt, but it also gave me dozens of mentors and close friends who supported my goals in the magazine industry, as well as my transition to non-profit entrepreneurship. Several of my scholarship sisters are now volunteers, campus chapter leaders or advocates for She’s the First in their workplace. Most recently, for example, Meredith Engel, who now works at Metro, wrote about our Tie-Dye Cupcake campaign, and it was read by about a million people on their commutes through New York and Boston!
 

The mission of She’s the First is to sponsor girls’ education in developing world countries — and there’s no doubt that my own scholarship fueled the pay-it-forward fire!

To what do you attribute your success at such a young age?
I was lucky to receive a quality public school education. I had quality internships in college. I have two loving parents and was also raised around wonderful grandparents, who supported my dreams and encouraged me to pursue any career path I wanted.

What inspired you to create She’s the First?
I created She’s the First as a media campaign, a video PSA that encouraged my generation to gather their friends to sponsor a girl together. Using our social media networks, our small donations added up to a BIG impact easily. Essentially, I believed the same skills I was using to help girls have the perfect prom — as editor of MyPromStyle.com, then the prom site for Seventeen, CosmoGIRL and Teen magazines, and DonateMyDress.org — could also help send girls to school in struggling countries. There was a need to show the stories behind the startling statistics: 130 million children are not in school around the world, and 70% of them are girls. We can each impact the life of at least one girl to change this. She’s the First is a creative, transparent, trustworthy platform on which you can do so. The huge response from young women who thought about what they were the first to do (for example, I’m the first in my immediate family to graduate from college, move to New York City and travel to Africa), fueled our momentum and evolution into a fully-fledged 501c3 charity.

Where do you see your career and non-profit work in 5 years?
My long-range goal is to make She's the First scalable and sustainable — and in the process, show that we’re having a transformative impact on each girl's life we touch, both among students in the developing world and among sponsors in the United States. You will start seeing She’s the First invest even more in the leadership of high school and college students in the U.S., as a means of raising even more revenue for girls’ sponsorships.

What do you enjoy doing when you're not working?
My best friend, Rachel Mount, is a food editor at O, the Oprah Magazine and there’s nothing I love more than the low-key evenings when I’m having a delicious dinner that she made among friends! Also, I enjoy going home to visit my family in New Jersey and watching a movie or going on a little adventure around town with them.