In honor of National Women’s Day last Wednesday, Girls star Allison Williams took part in the #BeBoldForChange panel with Keds. Not only did she help lead conversations about femininity, female empowerment, and style (of course), but the audience was carried away into a much-needed dialogue about the fight for equality.

Following the event, Allison sat down with Refinery29 to discuss her activism and how Lena Dunham inspires her to give other women hope.

“I’ve learned so much about activism from Lena,” she explained. “I’ve always had deeply held beliefs, but watching Lena do her work has given me so much to learn from. Compared to Lena, most of the advocacy I do really only has one side (kids deserve good educations; withholding treatment for HIV/AIDS is bad). I have an enormous amount of admiration for the work she does, and I admire her guts to put her own reputation on the line in defense and support of others.”

Allison explains that not only does she want to play strong women, she also wants to play real, “3-D” women: “Women who I could picture encountering someday. Not a facsimile of what a woman might be juxtaposed against a male protagonist,” she elaborated. “Even if she falls short of her best intentions or her best self, I like playing people who at least feel they have some amount of agency. I don’t believe in putting out into the world female characters who we don’t want our young girls modeling themselves after in some way.”

She also spoke about her part in the Women’s March earlier this year and how we all can make a difference.

“I think the number one thing we all must do as citizens is brush up on our civics,” she said. “What are the rights we are given as per our Constitution? I want to know everything about what is going on, to stay vigilant, to read between the lines, to get information from different sources, and to look up facts that seem dubious. That’s what I’m focusing on — the activism work that comes from the heart, the causes that speak to me, the stories that tug at my heartstrings or seem unfair or un-American in some way. That’s where the work should go. That’s the magic sauce that creates change.”