Stephanie Kurlow (@stephaniekurlow) was born and raised in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia to a Russian mother and an Australian father. She began dancing at the age of two but stopped when she was nine years old after discovering no studios were accommodating to her and her beliefs. To help, her mother founded a performing arts category in 2012, when Stephanie was eleven, offering classes to girls studying ballet, martial arts, and aboriginal art classes. That same year, when she was eleven, Stephanie began wearing the hijab full time. Since then, she has become known as the first Hijabi Ballerina, drawing inspiration from other minority ballet dancers and athletes, included Misty Copeland and Zahra Lari. In addition to her ballet, she is also an ambassador for Remove Hate from the Debate, which helps youth to identify and track online hate speech. Stephanie was also featured in a Lenovo campaign & a global camping for Converse, that sought to refine what girl means. In 2018 she received a scholarship to study at The Royal Danish Ballet summer school and she is now working to become the worlds first Hijabi ballet dancer in a professional ballet company.