The women executives in Chanel and Prada suits knew they were outclassed by the students from the Young Women’s Leadership School in Harlem, who joined them at the Pierre Hotel yesterday — dressed in the kilts and knee socks of their school uniform — for the school’s first fund-raising event.

“I want to go to Harvard. I will go to Harvard,” a junior, Ujjiji Davis, said.

“I want to be a veterinarian,” a sophomore, Brenda Badillo said. She’s currently training her pet cockatoos how to speak. “They’re already saying ‘mom.’ I’m working on ‘hi,'” Ms. Badillo said.

“I am going to be on Broadway and I want to start a children’s production company,” a graduate of the class of 2006, Lydia Warr, who is a first-year student at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, said.

The girls — some with pigtails, others with braces, all smiling broadly — were the presenters and emcees of the event, which brought in $625,000 for the Young Women’s Leadership Foundation, which opened the first all-girls public school 10 years ago in East Harlem. Since then it has added schools in Queens, the Bronx, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Dallas. The newly installed executive director, Julie Horowitz, has a vision of even greater geographic coverage.

Perhaps the most impressive fact cited at the event, which celebrated the school’s 10th anniversary, is that the school has a 100% college attendance rate. “They are not just the leaders of tomorrow; they are leaders now,” the school’s co-founder with her husband Andrew Tisch, Ann Rubenstein Tisch, said. “The first thing they’ve been taught is to be leaders of their own lives.”

Over the past years, the leading women of New York have learned to follow them. Attendees of the event included some of the city’s most accomplished leaders, from the president of Hearst, Cathleen Black, to the president of the American Museum of Natural History, Ellen Futter; from television personality Deborah Norville to the vice chairwoman of the Whitney Museum of Art, Brooke Neidich; from the veteran politician, Geraldine Ferraro, to the powerhouse at the Studio Museum of Harlem, Thelma Golden.

“My only worry about this morning is that there’s no one having breakfast at the Regency,” Ms. Tisch said, referring to the power scene at the hotel down the street from the Pierre that is owned by her husband’s family.

Given the chic breakfast served, the Regency had better watch out. Among the items served at the direction of the chef of Per Se, Thomas Keller, was a spoonful of scrambled eggs served in an eggshell.

“The school offers not only an amazing education but also the range of possibilities open to women,” Ms. Golden said while accepting an award. Other honorees were the president of the Starr Foundation, Florence Davis, and a managing director of Allen & Company, Nancy Peretsman. The “Man We Love” award went to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.