Danielle Barnes
Empowering Girls One Cookie at a Time
Meet Danielle Barnes, CEO, and President of the Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee. Danielle has a lifelong passion for building strong community leaders, especially among women, girls, and the under-resourced Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee. The organization serves nearly 17,000 girls and adults in 39 counties across middle Tennessee. Danielle previously served as a member of the governor’s cabinet as the Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services.
What does it mean to you that the Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee is the premier leading organization for girls?
Danielle Barnes describes the heart of Girl Scouts in Middle Tennessee as, “It is the only place where you can come and you can strip off all of your identifiers… You are at the very core, a girl in America trying to figure it out.”
What does today’s Girl Scout look like?
Today’s Girl Scouts are a diverse group of individuals, much like snowflakes, each unique in their passions and aspirations. They are fiercely independent, civically engaged, and globally aware.
With the infusion of new residents to Tennessee, how is that reflected in the Girl Scouts that are part of your organization?
Barnes describes her mantra of “all means all”, being very intentional with reaching girls no matter where they are in their communities, particular lives, and life circumstances. “We want to be able to give them that opportunity even for just a brief moment, to have experiences that are something different, something unique and something more powerful than they would normally have. So our focus has shifted over the last year, but it has also been very intentional about just being present in different communities.”
How is Girl Scouts supporting and addressing all of the things of today – mental health, diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice?
“It is very true how our kids today are just ingrained in their phones. And so we’re an opportunity to put your phone down, to go outside to try a new activity, to break some of those things, some of the harsh effects that people have from social media and just constant influence of technology. And then we’re able to really branch that back out to say, try stem. Let’s go to, did you know that one of the first people on the moon was a Girl Scout? And that kind of gets people excited. It does.”
How do you recruit new members and new troops these days?
Barnes mentions that they are going into 39 different schools in the Middle Tennessee Counties this year, as well as partnering with several outreach programs in different communities such as Metro Housing Development Authority and Metro parks.
How do you recruit volunteers like Moms, Aunts and Grandmothers today?
“The abuela of the world, yeah. We’ve had some lifelong volunteers who are amazing and all of the volunteers that we have with us right now are amazing. It’s a little easier to get a girl excited about Girl Scouts. It’s a lot harder to get our working moms excited about it. And it’s very simple, right? The world has changed. We’re now in families where if not one parent, two parents are working outside of the home. And so we’ve really tried to just back up and understand the journey of the volunteer to say, how can we make this easier for you?”
How would you describe the importance of the “cookie” program for young girls?
“It’s a serious subject because I don’t think that people truly understand the entrepreneurial efforts that these young women put into the cookie program,” Danielle says, “to be able to offer our troops and our scouts the opportunity to really figure out how do we balance, what are we going to use our dollars for? How are we going to balance, how much are we going to sell? How are we going to market to build those skills at such a young age is so critical.
Resources and Links
Danielle Barnes on Linked In
Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee on Facebook
Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee website
