Icon Award Winner: Judy Girard’s Trailblazing Path
Girls Leadership Academy of Wilmington (GLOW Academy) is a Young Women’s Leadership affiliate school. ILMA magazine is honoring GLOW’s founder, Judy Girard, with its Icon Award. The school’s Director of College Access, Jahleese Hadley, is a finalist in the Women to Watch Education category.
By Vicky Janowski, Photo by Madeline Gray
Originally published in WILMA magazine on August 15, 2025
Throughout her career and in “retirement,” Judy Girard’s default setting has been to break molds.
In her various television executive roles, Girard redefined several formats that influenced programming – as well as pop culture – at the lifestyle networks where she worked.
In 2008, she retired from television, packed up her newly earned Lifetime Achievement Emmy along with the rest of her belongings, and moved to Wilmington.
It wasn’t long before Girard began building partnerships in her new hometown and set her sights on another groundbreaking project: the state’s first all-girls charter school.
In 2013, Girard and Georgia Miller announced they started a nonprofit to develop what would become Girls Leadership Academy of Wilmington, or GLOW.
GLOW’s structure was inspired by the [Young Women’s Leadership Schools], the first of which opened in Harlem, New York. It operated as a public-private model in which the schools were public and supported by a private foundation.
