Photo: Via @NYSEEuronext.
When Twitter debuted its highly anticipated IPO this morning, you might've expected some company bigwigs to open trading at the New York Stock Exchange with a ring of the bell. Instead, Sir Patrick Stewart, Boston police spokesperson Cheryl Fiandaca, and a 9-year-old girl named Vivienne Harr took to the stands to kick things off. Before Twitter opened at $45.10 — a nice jump from the initial $26 per share Twitter announced late Wednesday — TechCrunch's Anthony Ha took to the floor to speak to Harr, the young girl who turned her lemonade stand into an anti-child-slavery organization.
Harr began her Make a Stand organization in 2012. She set up a lemonade outpost and worked for days to raise more than $100,000, which she donated to the Not for Sale campaign. Make a Stand now contributes 5 percent of its revenue to what it calls a "mutual fund" of anti-slavery organizations.
But, why would Twitter choose her to represent them at the NYSE? Well, like Sir Patrick Stewart, Harr is big on social media. The invite was no surprise, but the fact that she physically got to ring the bell reportedly was. “Today, we rang the bell for hope and freedom, and I just would like to tell everyone out there that you don’t have to be big or powerful to change the world,” she told Ha. “You can be just like me.” (TechCrunch)