Georgie Badiel Liberty was born in Côte d’Ivoire and spent much of her childhood between there and Burkina Faso. The fifth of ten siblings, she grew up in the small village of Koffikro, where mornings started too early for a girl who didn’t like waking up before sunrise.

Every day at 6 a.m., Georgie would head out with her grandmother and female cousins to fetch water. It was a three-hour round trip, carrying heavy buckets to fill the family’s barrel, nearly 59 gallons in all. The boys in the family stayed home, still asleep. That was just the way things were.

Some mornings, Georgie would slip behind the house to cry before picking up her bucket. She didn’t understand why the girls had to walk so far, or why the water had to be boiled before they could drink it. She asked too many questions according to her grandmother. But her grandmother believed Georgie would grow up to do something about it.

Years later, and Georgie’s journey from that dusty path in Koffikro to the world’s fashion runways, children’s bookshelves, and international stages of advocacy is proof that her grandmother was right. Today, Georgie is turning her questions into solutions and helping build a future where no girl misses school, loses sleep, or carries the weight of inequality just to drink clean water.