Lady Gaga

You probably know Lady Gaga for her meat dress and “Poker Face.” But did you know she launched a foundation that’s funded mental health projects for over 75,000 students?

When “The Fame” dropped in 2008, Lady Gaga became a global pop phenomenon.

Poker Face, Bad Romance, Born This Way.

Each single broke records.

She sold 124M+ records, won 14 Grammys, 2 Golden Globes, and an Oscar.

She headlined the Super Bowl, topped the Billboard charts six times, and became the only female artist with four singles that sold over 10M copies each.

But at 19, she was assaulted.

As a teen, she was bullied, thrown into a trash can.

She’s lived with PTSD, anxiety, and depression.

And she never hid it.

In 2012, at the height of her fame, she launched Born This Way Foundation with her mother, Cynthia Germanotta.

They started with $1.2M from Gaga, $500K from the MacArthur Foundation, and $850K from Barneys New York.

The Born Brave Bus followed her tours, connecting young people to free mental health support.

Channel Kindness trained 100 youth reporters (ages 15–24) to document stories of resilience in their communities.

In 2019, they launched Teen Mental Health First Aid in U.S. high schools.

By 2020, it reached 75+ schools, training students to recognize and respond to peer crises.

The Foundation also collected data.

In 2015, they partnered with Yale to survey 22,000 students. 75% said they felt “tired, stressed, or bored” at school.

With the University of Nebraska, they built the Kindness & Bravery Scale to measure emotional safety in schools.

They launched #BeKind21 in 2018: one act of kindness per day for 21 days.

In Year 2, it logged 40M+ acts across 7,000+ schools, orgs, and companies.

They partnered with DonorsChoose to fund 697 school mental health projects, impacting 75,000+ students.

In 2022, they gave out $1M in grants to grassroots orgs in Chromatica Ball tour cities.

Gaga stayed on stage through it all.

She won an Oscar for Shallow, topped the charts with Rain on Me, starred in “A Star is Born” and “House of Gucci,” and dropped Chromatica and Mayhem.

In Vegas, she brought trained students onstage during her residency to speak about mental health.

In 2020, she published Channel Kindness, a collection of 51 stories written by young people.

And she also raised $570K with Dom Pérignon, partnered with Starbucks, Staples, and MAC to funnel millions into youth wellness programs.