Vy Le
Vy Le is the Founder and Executive Director of WhereWear, a youth-led nonprofit transforming clothing donations into targeted support for women's and housing-insecure shelters and the people they serve. Rather than broad donation drives, WhereWear works directly with shelter staff to identify urgent needs and delivers pre-washed, sorted, and packaged specialty clothing, including professional attire, maternity wear, plus-size clothing, and winter coats, to the people who need it most.
Vy founded WhereWear at 15 after visiting her pregnant teenage cousin in a women's shelter and learning she had nothing professional to wear to an upcoming job interview. That moment sparked a question she couldn't shake: Was there a more sustainable solution? Moved by what she witnessed, Vy began organizing neighborhood clothing drives. After shelter staff explained that their greatest shortages were often specialty clothing items, she shifted to targeted collections and ultimately created Cycle, an online platform that connects donors with shelters' verified clothing needs.
Since its creation, WhereWear has donated more than 17,000 specialty clothing items to over 100 shelters across six states. Through this growth, Vy has championed one core belief: building solutions with communities, not for them. She remains motivated by the knowledge that every donation is genuinely needed—and has the potential to make a meaningful difference.
As an incoming first-year student at Yale University, Vy plans to continue expanding WhereWear while gaining new perspectives and deepening her understanding of how to build solutions that turn scarcity into opportunity.
