[1] During Lesko's last two years at Rollins College, she created a recreational program for 100 children of Florida orange pickers about 45 minutes from campus.
[7] She has presented hundreds of speeches and workshops ranging from the National Human Services Assembly to the US State Department International Visitors Leadership Program.
In 2018, Anika Manzoor, one of the co-founders at age 12 of School Girls Unite and the Youth Activism Project, became the first full-time paid executive director.
[8] [7] Lesko has been recognized as a leading expert in youth-led policy advocacy by diverse publications from across the nation, including The Washington Post, Houston Chronicle and Youth Today.
Together with Karen Jackson-Knight, Lesko co-founded SPARK, a community-based program that provided free tutoring to hundreds of public school students for over a decade.