Belle Sol, formerly known as Empower Her, was founded by the management professor in 2016 with the goal of supporting women and girls in advancing their social and emotional well-being by providing an array of skills and pro-social education that they can implement in all sectors of life.

“I realized that there was a lack of social-emotional education in schools, and I wanted to provide girls with a toolkit of skills and prosocial education that they could take with them as they entered middle and high school,” said Beerli while talking about what inspired her. “I also wanted to provide a place of support and encouragement as well as social opportunities for women.”

Belle Sol proudly offers programming for young women and girls to create this supportive environment, she said, which is all possible through yearly fundraising efforts.

“We currently offer in-person, custom programming to schools and other community organizations such as Girl Scouts as well as to local businesses who provide programs to support women,” said Beerli. “In addition, we have empowerment boxes and empowerment workbooks for sale on our website that provide girls and women with our programs at home.”

In 2017, a year after founding Belle Sol, Beerli was additionally inspired to create the GIRLS Scholarship, a fund supporting graduating girls in New Haven County in their future endeavors in education.

Beerli currently enjoys teaching “introduction to nonprofit management” at Quinnipiac in the School of Business where she utilizes her knowledge in the non-profit world, she said. Beerli believes having a non-profit has added to her abilities as a professor and influenced how she teaches by allowing her to provide students with real-life situations and examples.

“Having founded a nonprofit myself, I used a lot of what I learned along the way to build the introduction to nonprofit management course at Quinnipiac and use my experiences to provide the students with firsthand information,” she said. “Teaching this course at Quinnipiac has been a great source of gaining student interns for Belle Sol. I have had three former students intern for Belle Sol which was a great, very successful experience on both ends.”

Beerli added that she loves seeing her students grow and become enthusiastic about their work. She places an emphasis on interaction among students in the classroom in order to help facilitate growth and the discovery of interests and passions in the non-profit sector.