Growing up in the country meant spending many idle, hot summers alone — summers that incubated wily desires and afforded time to explore them. At eight years old, I had successfully constructed a teepee from a shower curtain pulled from my neighbor’s garbage bin. By 10, I attempted to dry my mother’s canned corn, in preparation for a mighty winter. My grandmother was a Native American, and I staunchly believed that when I grew up, I would return to my roots.

But somewhere around the age of 13, what I wanted to be was not nearly as important as who I was to others, so I put away my tent poles for a "top 40" CD. In school, most girls around me did, too. Overnight, our worlds were reduced to CoverGirl, Spice World and each other.

Teen girls often drift away from their dreams during middle and high school years. “What happens to that rugged, you-can-do-anything attitude?” Meredith Walker asks me. “That part of you that wanted to be a firewoman or a vet?”

Six years ago, she and Amy Poehler were turning this question over and over one night in Poehler’s NY apartment, reminiscing about their childhoods. The pair became fast friends after working together on SNL, where Walker served as the Head of the Talent Department in New York for about 10 years. “The conversation kept coming around to those [teen] years and what happened to us,” Walker says.

“What Amy and I wished we had was a sort of guiding beacon,” she continues. “Someone that told us who we were then was enough.”

So they created it, using a medium they knew kids love: TV.

Now,Smart Girlsat the Party is a rapidly expanding online network that aims to build confidence in young girls’ aspirations. In each episode, Walker, along with host Poehler and decorated singer-songwriter Amy Miles, interview girls with talents that run a wide gamut — like Valentine (the gardener), Rachel (the engineer), or Ruby (the feminist).

It's part interview, part profile; full of on-the-fly humor reminiscent of SNL. Each show concludes with important questions that Poehler poses, such as "Which is cuter, a baby panda - or a baby monkey?" Or sometimes, a dance party. Smart Girls recognizes that girls — and their interests — are multi-faceted.

The third season begins filming this spring in Austin. Walker, a Houston native who now works as a producer based in Austin, thinks the town is the perfect home for the show. Its rich cultural diversity and its willingness to support any lifestyle is analogous to Smart Girls' mission, and sure to provide "the most interesting" subjects yet.

Currently, Walker is scouting for subjects at places like the Ann Richards School (where she also mentors), as well as areas outside of Texas.

Walker has a zesty authenticity, expressive almond eyes and casual sense of humor that disarmed me immediately. She slouches in her seat and leans in to whisper off-the-record confessions; her laugh is rich and carries over the noise of the coffee shop. They're ingredients for a great producer, and especially good qualities for working with kids.

Before SNL she was the senior producer for NICK NEWS, where she visited every state, interviewing countless kids for the show’s segments. Under her tenure, NICK NEWS won several Emmys and the coveted Peabody Award. “I’m not the world’s greatest producer, but I’m great at making people feel comfortable and getting them to open up,” Walker says, without a trace of irony.

She remembers when older women first took her seriously — it was a 30-something friend of her mother's, and a relationship Walker recreates with her mentees today. “I wasn’t trying to win their approval, like I was with the girls at school,” she says. “It wasn’t until later that I realized those relationships were the key to getting through those really turbulent adolescent years.”

Most women know that during teen years, girls crave group support and readily abandon their interests for the sake of fitting in. The estrogen surges that go hand-in-hand with puberty make this a biological and social truth. “As a girl,” Walker explains, “you desperately need somebody telling you, ‘Be weird! That’s what’s *&%$ing great about you!’ But biology is telling you to fit in.”

Walker and the crew are planning its expansion from an online show to an internet hub for teens, complete with news and interactive boards, “Sort of like a Huffington Post for girls,” she says. YouTube awarded Smart Girls one of its 100 new premium channels (Slate, TED and LiveStrong are among others) in October; the new medium will mean a bigger audience, more funding and more exposure than ever before.

Working with Smart Girls has reawakened something in Walker. It's something other women feel too, women buried under mortgages, children and age-appropriate expectations who comment on the Smart Girlssite.

"Sometimes, you get an idea of a role you're supposed to play [in life], and you forget to have fun and be curious," Walker says. "But you never have to give up that part of you that wants to be an astronaut... we all have an inner smart girl."