by Casey Acierno

WASHINGTON D.C. -- This week, the White House took a page from Kanye West's book of wisdom, and decided to "listen to the kids!" as they honored 11 badass female activists as 'Champions of Change'.

The event was moderated by Laci Green ("MTV Braless") and Franchesca Ramsey ("MTV Decoded") who led these young community leaders in discussions about leadership, social justice and Olivia Pope.

MTV's Look Different campaign, which shared the hosting duties on Tuesday, was on hand and chatted up some of the honorees. I'd like to introduce you to five of these superwomen who are fighting bias right at home.

Meredith Boyce

What she does: When she was younger, Meredith had a traumatic brain injury that caused her to lose her sight. Since then, she's used her passion for computers to help out her fellow blind classmates with accessible technology.

What she says: Meredith loves using humor to defuse tough conversations. "Having an element -- a human element -- to explaining what's wrong and what happened made it easier."

Marissa Jennings

What she does: Marissa started SOCIALgrlz when she realized there was a shortage of magazines and apps for young African-American girls. SOCIALgrlz is a place they can go to get advice, talk about issues and find out how they can become leaders themselves.

What she says: Representation matters. "Girls need to see images of other women and girls who look like them, and girls who have similar backgrounds as themselves."

Faatimah Knight

What she does: Faatimah started #RespondWithLove, a fundraising campaign among her Muslim community to support black churches that were the victims of recent arson attacks. The campaign raised more than $100,000.

What she says: It's important for people from all different backgrounds to work together in the fight against bias. "It makes us feel empowered when people who we don't expect to care do care," she told me.

Ashley Nicole McCray

What she does: Over the course of her academic career, Ashley noticed that there was a serious lack of representation of Native people like herself -- from an absence of Native people in her classrooms and administrations to Native history being ignored in the textbooks. Since then, she's dedicated herself to diversity and inclusivity work at the University of Oklahoma.

What she says: Slurs can have a real impact. "You leave a lot of people out because those words were intended to leave those people out."

Swetha Prabakaran

What she does: Swetha wanted to teach her little sister how to code. She soon realized, though, that her little sister's school wasn't the only elementary school that didn't offer computer science classes. Because of that, Swetha founded Everybody Code Now!, a nonprofit that empowers young people to learn to code.

What she says: It's crucial to include women in conversations about technology. "Over half of the users of technology are women, and when they're not creating the content or they don't know how," Swetha said, "they're not going to be able to solve the issues that affect them. They're not going to be able to target the communities that are important to them, and we lose their voices and we lose their perspective."

It's pretty obvious why we always want to shout out women like these that are doing incredible work in their communities, but Laci probably put it best: "The world is not always fair and just to young women, particularly women with additional marginalized identities. Empowering them to be confident, unapologetic, and validated in their endeavors is one of many keys to combatting prejudice."

Want to find out how you can take a stand against bias in your own community? Visit Look Different.