Project 21 member Antonia Okafor Cover is the founder and president of EMPOWERED, a nonprofit group designed to educate, train and equip young women in the use of firearms for protection on college campuses. The group also helps women advocate for their Second Amendment rights. Formerly the southwest regional director for Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, Antonia was instrumental in the 2015 passage and implementation of a “campus carry” gun law in Texas.
Antonia has appeared in a commercial for the National Rifle Association and was a participant in the group’s “Armed and Fabulous” panel at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference. Her op-ed “Why I Bring a Gun to School” was published in the New York Times in 2017.
She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas with a Bachelor of Arts in international political economy. She is currently working on her Master’s in public policy at the school. She is also a campus correspondent for Campus Reform.
Antonia has appeared on the Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Blaze TV and was a regular panelist on the Daily Wire’s “Michael Knowles Show.” Red Alert Politics selected her as one of the “30 Under 30” young political activists in 2017.
Her PragerU video, “Black, Millennial, Female… and Conservative,” has earned over 10 million views.
Her interest in public service evolved from her days as a Girl Scout, where she earned both her Silver and Gold Award. Her specific passion to work with women and children has led her to serve in the impoverished communities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and a crisis pregnancy center in Savannah, Georgia. She also helped deliver aid in Managua, Nicaragua and Beirut, Lebanon – where she worked with Syrian and Iraqi refugees.