Photo: Tina Krohn
In the spirit of uplifting a new generation of women who spot one another through life's challenges, Anne Marie Chaker ’97 recently profiled (below) Sophia Ewald ’26 and Eva Strage ’26 in her Lift newsletter. Ewald and Strage founded the Girls Who Lift weightlifting club at Columbia University — the first official club at Columbia dedicated to fostering a supportive fitness community for women and nonbinary students.
To learn more about Chaker, read her Q&A following the students’ profile.
Sophia Ewald ’26, a 20-year-old neuroscience and behavior major, wasn’t inspired to start strength training by a superstar athlete or fit-fluencer.
Rather, it was someone closer to home.
“I’m really close with my grandmother,” says Ewald. “And I see, with her, how important it is to maintain strength and health. As you grow older, you can lose everyday functions quickly, but if you keep your body strong, you can maintain them longer. That realization made me see how much you can do for yourself by lifting weights.”
I had the chance to chat with Sophia a few weeks ago when I visited my alma mater, Barnard College. Aside from babysitting, peer mentoring, and working 10 hours a week at a lab on campus, Sophia is also the co-founder of a newly sanctioned club at Columbia University: Girls Who Lift.
The club joins a number of other informal lifting groups for women that have begun to crop up on university campuses (such as Girl Gains, a female weightlifting club with chapters at over 100 universities, including San Diego State University, Arizona State University, and UCLA).
At the start of last year, Sophia and her best friend, Eva Strage ’26, began informally gathering friends to coordinate times to lift weights together. What started as small meetups quickly expanded after they began advertising through posters and promoting campus activities, inviting others to join.
The idea for the group emerged from a chance encounter one evening at Dodge Fitness Center, the Columbia University gym. Although Sophia and Eva were hall-mates, they had been going to the gym separately. Once they ran into each other, exchanged awkward hellos, and decided to spot one another, they realized they shared a common sentiment: Both were intimidated by the testosterone-fueled atmosphere of the gym but found it much more enjoyable when they had each other for support.
Neither Sophia nor Eva considered themselves serious athletes. Although Sophia had played softball in high school, she wasn’t planning to continue sports in college. Eva, a competitive dancer, had grown disillusioned with the dance world’s punishing body culture. “It was very one-size-fits-all, and I was one of the people who was looked at strangely,” she says.
As the semester went on, the two found themselves drawn to the weight room, intrigued by resistance-based workouts they learned about through social media and observing others.
Eva began bringing more Barnard students with her to the gym. “My friends started asking if they could join me and if I could show them some moves. I became a point of contact for them in this intimidating space,” she explains. “We’d go and have these little coaching sessions. It’s something I had been thinking about for a long time.”
By their sophomore year, Sophia and Eva decided to expand the group. They created a group chat, and before long, 10 members turned into 100. In the second semester, they applied for official recognition, which required gathering sponsors and signatures, drafting a constitution, and forming an executive board. Official recognition would also provide them with a budget to host events and buy supplies. By the fall, they had achieved their goal.
This school year, Girls Who Lift kicked things off with a friendship bracelet-making event, followed by another for water bottle decorating. They also held a shopping event at a local Lululemon store. The group’s Swolemate Program pairs members based on gym goals and availability, fostering accountability and camaraderie. As of this writing, there are over 200 members.
“Working out together is so much better,” says Ewald. “It helps us feel like lifting weights isn’t just for athletes but for anyone who wants to be part of it.”
A major milestone for the group was the opening of the new Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being on campus. In addition to providing a dedicated weight room for Barnard students, the facility offers education and programming focused on health and wellness beyond the physical, including mental and financial well-being, to foster resilience and promote lifelong success.
Isabel Iino ’26, a 20-year-old junior, shared how lifting weights has helped her overcome an eating disorder.
“It transformed the way I view fitness,” says Isabel, who lifts four times a week with friends from the group. “It’s not just about my health; it’s about my mental health too. I’ve made so many friends in the gym. Every day, it does something for my brain.”
Building Strength and Lifting Spirits
Building Strength and Lifting Spirits
A self-described “Wall Street Journal reporter turned professional bodybuilder,” Anne Marie Chaker ’97 is a strong advocate for women finding their strength — physically and mentally — and she knows its importance firsthand. In 2002, her collaborative reporting on the September 11 attacks helped the WSJ win the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage. After a series of personally challenging life events, including a divorce, Chaker began strength training in 2017. By 2020, she was winning competitions. Today, Chaker authors the Lift newsletter, and her book, Lift: How Women Can Reclaim Their Physical Power and Transform Their Lives, will be published in June. She is also co-host of the SiriusXM radio show Lift, with Pattie Sellers, about groundbreaking women — Chelsea Handler, Maria Shriver, and Dominique Dawes are all upcoming guests.
How did the book come about?
The book was born out of a story that I written in 2020 about my midlife journey into competitive bodybuilding. I wanted it to be a deep journalistic dive on where this thinness business came from, and what it has cost women — psychologically and economically — and society as a whole. It’s also about the unharnessed power of muscle and why women need to build rather than reduce themselves. And I love the title Lift, which is meant to be concrete about lifting weights, but also I want the book to hopefully uplift women.
What’s the biggest misconception about women and weightlifting, and what’s the reality?
I think women still worry about bulk. I can’t state it strongly enough that there is no way you will get bulky from weightlifting. We just don’t have the testosterone stores as women to have that kind of density of muscle. That’s a myth that will not die, it seems.
Has your relationship to fitness or athletics changed over the years?
I was a figure skater growing up, and I wasn’t built like a figure skater. I often got messages of thinness from coaches at the rink. When I rowed crew at Barnard, I wasn’t tall enough. It’s a sport that really favors longer limbs for the boat. So my relationship with my sports was: I was good at them, but I was never quite right. Yet in my 40s, I ended up doing well in this sport that favors older women. When you’re on stage, bodies with more mature muscle actually appear more interesting than younger ones.
