Alia Whitney-Johnson holding jewelry made by Sri Lankan women in Emerge Global’s workshops.Is there anything Alia Whitney-Johnson can’t do? The 22-year-old grew up on a farm in Leicester and will finish her environmental engineering degree at MIT in January. Since most MIT students have tons of free time, Whitney-Johnson decided to start a nonprofit, Emerge Global, out of her dorm room. Emerge Global helps empower young, abused Sri Lankan women by teaching them how to make cool jewelry, an idea Whitney-Johnson came up with after a 2005 visit to Sri Lanka to help clean up after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami there. For her work with Emerge Global, Glamour magazine named her one of the Top Ten College Women of 2007. Oh yeah—did we mention she was recently named a Rhodes Scholar?  

Believe it or not, she’s had some mixed feelings about the Rhodes scholarship, which she found out about in November last year. Now that she’s finished with MIT, she’d like to dedicate her full-time effort and energy to Emerge Global, which has three full-time employees—one salaried Sri Lankan woman and two American women whose living expenses are paid for by Emerge Global. Instead, like all Rhodes Scholars, she’ll be studying at Oxford for two years, earning her masters degree in international development. Not that there’s anything wrong with Oxford, of course. She says she was thrilled and humbled to actually be picked for the scholarship. But she’s been so engrossed in the Sri Lankan women’s stories since she started working with them four years ago that she can’t help but get caught up brainstorming ways to expand her program. She’s already been selling jewelry at craft fairs on MIT’s campus and online through the website Etsy. Eventually, she’d like to peddle their beaded wares to stores like Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters, pouring profits from the sales back into Sri Lankan community funds directed by women in her program. “I can’t end abuse, and I can’t change Sri Lanka,” she says, “but I can give the women there the tools to help change things themselves.” —M.K.

To learn more, or to make a donation, go to emergeglobal.org.