Eliza VanCort is a Cook House Fellow at Cornell University, an advisory board member of the Performing Arts for Social Change, and the creator of a highly regarded talk commissioned by MIT that focused on mentorship and institutionalized racism. She is the founder of the Actor's Workshop of Ithaca and has dedicated herself to empowering women of all experiences and backgrounds to claim space. VanCort gave a 2018 TED Talk called "Women, Power and Revolutionizing Speech," in which she shared her personal story and offered concrete yet transformative tools for real change.