Sahara Mofidi and her Journey in Her Campus

Her Campus is the leading media platform for empowering young women and girls across college campuses. Publishing articles about study tips to entertainment, Her Campus gives young women in college a chance to feel included and appreciated in a male-dominated education world. 

Her Campus Cal Poly is just one chapter of many throughout college campuses around the world. Established on campus in 2012, it gives college students the chance to explore publishing and everything it takes to run an online magazine. 

Sahara Mofidi, Her Campuses’ chapter president, is a senior English major planning to attend law school after graduation. She’s been an active member of the online publication since her first year at Cal Poly and has helped grow the chapter through inclusivity and a passion to create. 

Q: You are involved with Her Campus Cal Poly, our chapter of it. What position do you hold or how do you contribute and how did that all start? 

A: I'm an English major, but I didn't want to do something directly connected to the school like Mustang News because I thought that my work would be more centered towards the school and Cal Poly and I wanted more creative freedom. So I saw the Her Campus booth and it was a really small club at this point because it was after COVID, and I saw that it was a woman-led and fully woman chapter, a female chapter across the nation. And so I was really intrigued by that. I really liked how it was all women based and yeah, so I joined. 

Q: What positions have you taken on throughout your time?

A: At first I was a writer and graphic designer my freshman year. I actually did more graphic design than writing, but then after that, my sophomore year, I was the Instagram manager and I became director of events. I coordinated events, and Her Campus also does like brand deal stuff. So we would do that and booths and craft sales, different types of events on campus. And then my junior year, I still was director of events and then I was also vice president. So I did a lot of work just overseeing and helping the exec board and also helping the president at the time and I was still doing director of events. I was still doing the same things as the year before. And then now I'm the president. So it's been really fun and I really went through like a lot of different positions getting here, but I really enjoyed it. 

Q: You kind of talked a little bit about it a little bit, but what does the like women aspect of the club mean to you? What does it mean to you that it's created by women and kind of marketed towards women? 

A: Her Campus was started by three women at Harvard University and they… it's very much an expansive magazine. So we are an online magazine and it's more tailored to college students and girls. We don't exclusively talk about female ideas or female-centered topics. You know, there's a lot of creative freedom and so many different articles that people write and like, even our events are not always centered around women, but I think it's mostly about creating a fostered sisterhood. It also makes it easier to talk about topics that relate to women, such as reproductive health, beauty, fashion, and entertainment. You know, talking about pop stars and celebrities. So in like the grand scheme of things, it's mostly to foster an environment to talk about women and female topics and like more, I don't want to say feministic approaches, but probably a little bit. But it's not like the only thing that we're doing, which is also good because then we can expand our market to more people, but we do have more of a female audience. 

Q: How have all your positions and experiences here helped you career-wise? Would you like to continue in this kind of field after graduation? 

A: My goal for my career doesn't really have to do with Her Campus a hundred percent. I want to be an attorney and go to law school. But at the same time, it does help with career growth. I'm involved with connecting with brands and doing a lot of marketing like half of the work is marketing. You know, you need an audience to read the magazine, to go to the booths… you know, a lot of PR, a lot of social marketing. And that's what I love about Her Campus is that it's very expansive and it's not just the editorial side, there's the graphics and the more creative area and creating events. And so doing all of that has helped, I think my professional ability to reach out to people and know how to communicate and also know how to like sell her campus, sell like a product, sell a, you know, an idea to people and make sure that they're interested. It's like a lot of paying attention to our generation, what's happening right now. And that's so easy in college with a large group of girls. 

And then with my positions, I've always been like someone who is a leader and I like to lead. I like to create ideas and have a group to help get those ideas in fruition. But I think holding leadership positions, the main thing I've learned is how to like handle a lot of tasks at once, how to multitask, how to not only think about yourself but be very selfless. It’s really complex and there's a lot of different issues and problems that you have to deal with and having to communicate with people when, you know, it's maybe more uncomfortable times like creating and picking people for positions. And also learning, this is kind of niche, but learning how to… the amazing thing about Her Campus is like, you want something done, we can make it happen. In the beginning of this year, we had everyone write on note cards, like dream ideas they had for her campus, what they wanted to do, what they wanted to see happen. 

Q: Do you guys see more of one major? Do you guys see more of College of Liberal Arts students? What kind of people do you see having interest in the club or wanting to join or are already in it? 

A: We try to not emphasize a certain major because that can be very limiting and if someone is creative and maybe your major doesn't have to necessarily like relate to like journalism or magazines or being an English major, you just kind of cut off a big group of people. We don't want people to think like, ‘oh like I'm like a software engineering major like can I actually join her campus’ and we're like yeah of course. 

We don't say any talk about majors when we are recruiting people or talking about Her Campus but I would say generally like just because Her Campus is a magazine, we see more journalism and English majors. But we also have engineering majors, we also have business majors, we have like a good amount of business majors.