Sofia Chesnokova

I created DORKY gals in July 2015, and in the first year of the project, we have 5 team members and 6,000 readers. DORKY gals is a fully non-profit and independent media about both social issues that affect Russian women and subjects that can be important in everyday life — from makeup tutorials to manuals for those who find themselves in abusive relationships.

Now, when Russian society finally got some space for civil movements, I find it extremely important to spread the ideas that are worth to be known. One of them is gender equality. Thus, in May 2016 I took a stage during the biggest TEDx conference in Russia to date to raise my voice and represent feminist ideas in front of almost fully patriarchal audience of 1,300 people. I believe nothing scares me anymore.

After finishing my Bachelor's as a Journalist with a minor in Language studies, I approached a Grad school to work on my research on contemporary media and people's perception of it. I was collecting the database of people's feelings and emotions shaped with media we have today to find out something very obvious: we live in the new world of information, and there are so many ways to reach people's hearts through media one can never run out. You probably know that yourself, and the only one difference between us is that I know how to prove it scholarly on 120 pages, and use every single fact and detail in aproaching the career of my dreams.