#techgirls

Each month we spotlight a woman or girl in tech who inspires us. This month we are highlighting Allison Garrett, a digital designer and marketer. She is currently working on creating an education ecosystem called Radify Labs that helps students learn technical skills through a project based curriculum.

What was your pathway to working in technology? My pathway to working in technology started in college at UVA when I joined HackCville. HackCville is a local non-profit which helps students learn tech skills and I joined when I decided to take a class on graphic design. Joining HackCville completely changed my college experience because it got me interested in tech and through HackCville I was able pursue freelance graphic design projects and teach other UVA students and community members graphic design and digital media.

How do you work with technology today? I work with technology through freelance graphic design and marketing projects, through developing curricula which help students learn tech skills like graphic design and digital marketing, and through helping to promote growth at Radify Labs with my founding partners Andy Page and Yash Tekriwal (making websites, working with our Marketing Manager Matthew Quan, and creating branding).

What drives your interest in technology? I think technology is so powerful because it helps designers to create ways to experience and interact with brands digitally. Having a digital presence is so important to a brand's success today and keeping up with the latest innovations in tech can help designers to facilitate a brand's success.

Why is it important to get more girls and women interested in technology? It is so important to get more girls and women interested in technology because learning about technology can help girls and women pursue careers in a quickly growing industry. I also believe that learning about technology can help girls and women to feel empowered. Learning digital design and digital marketing has helped to build my own confidence and through Radify Labs I want to be able to help other women to build their own confidence through learning technical skills like graphic design, digital marketing, data science, web design, and more.

Who inspires you to pursue your passion? My brother and sister-in-law, they are developers and designers who have started their own design firm called Copper Note in Richmond, Va. They inspire me because they are both designers and entrepreneurs, working together to pursue their shared passion.

What most excites you about the future of technology? What excites me most about the future of technology is the ability to create designs with empathy in mind. I think technology will continue to evolve to allow designers to create designs for everyone.

by Karima, Morocco, TG2015

I participated in two exchange programs: TechGirls and LetGirlsLearn and I will say something I’ve always been saying and always will: Exchange programs are golden opportunities; most of the things I learned were from these programs, and for that I‘ll always be grateful.  

LetGirlsLearn is a United States government initiative to ensure adolescent girls get the education they deserve. In this program, 22 Moroccan girls and 22 Liberian girls got the chance to travel to the United States of America and visit the former First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, in the White House.

Being part of something like this is so important to me and it is considered one the amazing things that has ever happened to me because during this program, I met amazing people like Mrs Obama, the beautiful actresses Meryl Streep and Frieda Pinto, and the talented CNN journalist Isha Sesay. I met 44 beautiful and strong young girls who overcame many obstacles and fought so hard to get the education which is rightfully theirs. I heard their stories, I shared my story with them and I learned that perseverance and resilience are two major elements to be successful and conquer anything.

I love this program because it made me realize something very important which is that girls are still struggling to get education, still working or getting married at an early age instead of sitting in a classroom where they belong. Therefore, looking at myself and what I’ve accomplished so far, everything would mean nothing if I did not use what I have to help other girls around the world.

This program was an amazing opportunity that taught me a lot of things and broadened my way of thinking and seeing things; it made me believe that if you work so hard for something, you will succeed. Something Michelle Obama said, “There is no magical dust, it just takes hard work” will always stick with me.

Each month we spotlight a woman or girl in tech who inspires us. This month we are highlighting Dorothy (Dot) Braden Bruce. Dot is one of several women highlighted in the new book, Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy. Dot grew up in Lynchburg, VA, graduated from Randolph Macon Women's College, and began teaching high school in Virginia until she learned of a possible, but undisclosed, government job in Washington, D.C.

Dot’s story of going from a small town teacher to an unknown, secret job decrypting intercepted messages to help the allies win the war, demonstrates a level of tenacity that thousands of women who laid the groundwork for our current cybersecurity industry had. They also faced a level of myths and stereotypes about women that seem appalling and ridiculous now.

Code Girls is so good, but sometimes frustrating to read because it's about a large cohort of women who were "pioneering the field at the dawn of the computing industry," yet lost to history until now. It’s a must read for anyone who loves computer science! I had the pleasure of meeting Dot and moderating the Code Girls: Smart Got It Done panel at the Virginia Festival of the Book.

Here are some thoughts shared at the panel captured in tweets.

Each month we spotlight a woman or girl in tech who inspires us. This month we are highlighting Jade Burns. Jade is a junior at Albemarle High School enrolled in their Math, Engineering, and Science Academy (MESA). She is a member of the Computer Science Honor Society and Math Honor Society and is active in the Math Club, Chemistry Club, and Key Club, where she is the webmaster. She is a Tech-Girls volunteer and a previous Bio-Med Tech-Girls participant.

How do you work with technology today? During my freshmen year, I volunteered with a student help desk called Patriots (our mascot) Assisting with Technology or PATS Desk. PATS Desk is in our school’s library and at the beginning of each school year, the librarians would recruit students from several study halls to volunteer with PATS Desk, rather than go to study hall. While I volunteered with PATS Desk, I learned a lot about the school-issued laptops, like troubleshooting tips and how to build/rebuild them from scratch.

During my sophomore year, I became an intern with the PATS Desk; the librarians and IT workers were my supervisors. As an intern, I applied my technology skills by creating instructional screencasts to be shown to the entire school, re-imaging all school-issued laptops alongside the IT workers, and other technology-related activities that gave me a taste of the IT world.

Currently, I am in my junior year and both of my MESA classes are engineering, which requires one to become more adept with technology. For instance, we were assigned several build projects such as the marble spring canon and mousetrap car this year; both of these projects required me to create several detailed 3-D drawings on CAD. Prior to this year, I had hardly any experience with 3D drawings, but after these projects, I could practically call myself an expert!

What drives your interest in technology? My interest in technology was set on fire after experiencing the way that society chose boys for computing and technology rather than girls, who were not expected to thrive in STEM. This inaccurate notion upsets me and is a driving factor for why I have come to love STEM so much. 

After personally encountering the obstacles society had for girls interested in STEM, me, being the rebellious individual that I am, obviously, became even more impassioned about STEM because I wanted to prove the ignorant people wrong. So, I decided to venture down the STEM pathway, a journey many of my girl friends fear to this day and was ecstatic to realize that I actually enjoy STEM and am good at it, which definitely hooked me!

What do you remember about your first coding experience? My first coding experience was last year -  my sophomore year - in AP Computer Science A at my high school. The first time I came to this class, I discovered that most of the other students were upperclassmen and that my gender was a serious minority. Girls made up about a 1/4 of the class, but it did make me happy to see that my APCS teacher was in fact a woman, so that helped keep my hopes us for my gender's involvement in STEM. Throughout sophomore year, APCS was definitely one of my most challenging classes - AP World History being the most out of all! I think I struggled with APCS because sophomore year was the first time I took AP classes and I was not used to the workload, fast-paced environment, and I was especially not ready for the fact that my AP classes would require me to pursue my learning independently to some extent. I had been so used to relying on my teacher, that I did not realize I would have to be more in charge of my education in an AP class.

What was your pathway to working in technology? I became part of the close-knit community of MESA within my school and this community has been really valuable to me throughout each school year. It has been so nice forging friendships with people who have similar interests as me and are just as passionate, if not more about STEM! Being part of the MESA community definitely inspired me to work more with technology. It was definitely a big reason for why I decided to be a PATS desk volunteer my freshmen year, and why I became a PATS desk intern my sophomore year. Being part of the technology scene is normal for students in MESA and pushed me to become even more involved. In fact, it is the director of MESA who told me of Tech-Girls in the first place and is how I came to become a mentor at Girl's Geek Day as well as a participant in the SPARK! Hackathon and a Bio-Med Tech-Girls program last year! As my high school career comes to a close next year, I know that MESA will remind me to continue working in technology.

Why is it important to get more girls and women interested in technology? I think it is important to get more girls and women interested in technology because adding their new voices and perspectives is necessary to the further advancement of technology. Technology itself is meant to help all people, which means both genders, so it would make sense if the creators of said technology were comprised of both genders on a more balanced scale. Since females are around 50% of the whole population using technology, shouldn't the creators be comprised of at least 50% females so that input from both sides is used for technology meant for males and females? Regarding technology specific to women, it just makes more sense for women to be creating that technology since it relates to them on a level that men just can't attain to the same degree.

What advice would you give to your younger self? I would tell myself to not be discouraged by the gender-based obstacles that come along with being a girl pursuing STEM. In actuality, applying for the Math, Engineering, and Science Academy (MESA) at Albemarle was a major decision for me and was ultimately a decision that would determine whether or not I was passionate enough about STEM to keep pursuing it. During the decision of applying to MESA, I was very indecisive at times because I was scared I wasn't smart enough to venture down the STEM pathway since I was a girl. I have now realized that was a stupid notion, but society had impressed that upon me. After receiving my acceptance to MESA, my fears evaporated and I grew to be more confident about my self-worth and what I could achieve. Now, I can tell my younger self with conviction that it's not gender determining whether or not you're good enough, it's yourself.  

Each month we spotlight a woman or girl in tech who inspires us. This month we are highlighting Christina Stiebris. She is a third year Biomedical Engineering student at the University of Virginia. Since getting involved with the BME Design Lab, she has been working with the team to create devices that help children with disabilities. Their goals typically revolve around increasing the child's independence, socialization, and mobility. She was also one of the student leaders for the Bio-Med Tech-Girls experience in 2016.

What drives your interest in technology? My interest and passion for technology is driven by the ability to utilize it to help others. I've been blessed with so many opportunities, and this serves as a way to give back to the community.

What was your pathway to working in technology? In high school, I worked with a program called "Go Baby Go" at University of Delaware. There, they modify toy ride-on-cars so children with motor disabilities can gain mobility. We took the one car to a pre-school to test it out. When the child got into the car, there was an instant transformation. He was suddenly the center of attention and was able to keep up and play with the other children. It was amazing how big of a difference this simple technology could make in that child's life. Seeing the difference I could make through my work drove me to pursue engineering.

How do you work with technology today?  What's cool about the BME design lab is that everything we do depends on the patients' needs. We work with 3D printing, molding, hardware prototyping, foam, arduinos, electric motors, etc. However, there's not one set thing we design or make. Everything changes depending on what functional needs the child has. I utilize the engineering design process to help children with the day-to-day function. Specifically, I worked on building a trike -- "CruiserX" -- for a child with severe dwarfism named Charlie. The experience was truly wonderful -- I learned so much about the technology it took to modify and make the tricycle. But when I saw Charlie's face light up when he cruised down the street in his trike -- that's what really moved me. I loved being able to see how something we made could have such a positive impact on someone else's life. It also required a huge cooperation -- we worked with physicians, occupational therapists, mechanical and electrical engineers, and the family to create something that would actually benefit Charlie.

Why is it important to get more girls and women interested in technology? There is so much opportunity in technology -- opportunity to learn, to grow, to advance, and to help others. Women bring a different perspective to projects and situations, so we need them to get more involved in technology to help shape what we do with it.

Each month we spotlight a woman or girl in tech who inspires us. This month we are highlighting Yasmin Curren. She is an online video content creator and influencer with a background in front-end development, currently studying Computer Game Arts.

How do you work with technology today? Through studying computer games I'm able to use my knowledge of C#, 3D modeling and animation within the games engine space to create new forms of storytelling to try and bridge the gap between film and games.

What drives your interest in technology? Storytelling has always been my main focus. I am passionate to explore how technology can be used to introduce interactivity to enhance a story and immerse the viewers within fictional worlds.

What do you remember about your first coding experience? I was studying a Media L3 Diploma in College and asked if I could switch units to study Games as a part of this Diploma. Within this time I was given the task of creating my first game in Unity, where I was confronted with the deadly task of coding some interactivity into the gameplay. I remember spending so long trying to understand how to script a flashlight to turn on and off by key press, but once the code finally worked and I could see it working in-game as I wanted I felt like a god, having full control over a world I created and I could see that with a knowledge of code anything was possible within these digital spaces.

What was your pathway to working in technology? I was never sure whether I preferred film or the games industry, so when I finished school I found myself a digital apprenticeship in a London advertising company, iris Worldwide. During this time I had the opportunity to work as a Creative Technologist until moving over to focus on Front-End Web Development. Once completing this apprenticeship I worked full-time as a front-end developer, working on websites, interactive online experiences and being the main developer for Samsung emails.

Why is it important to get more girls and women interested in technology? It's important to have equal genders within most areas of work, especially the creative sectors, which most definitely includes the tech industry. Having a mix of genders, ages and ethnicities help to broaden the overall mindset of a team with different views and understanding of topics and the world in general, which helps to feed more diverse and unique creative ideas. I believe that the tech industry still has a stigma over it that it's not a creative industry, but those who work within it know that it's completely the opposite. Creative thinking is needed to not only develop new and engaging projects but also to simply keep up with this ever-growing and changing world of technology. Creative individuals, male or female, would fit right at home in this industry.

Who inspires you to pursue your passion? I am lucky enough to be able to share my ideas, passions and projects with an engaged audience who are constantly supporting me and inspiring me to keep pursuing what I love. It's not always easy to stay focused and positive when chasing goals that sometimes seem unobtainable, however when you surround yourself with positivity it reminds you that even though times might get hard, it's always worth the effort in the end. I'm also inspired by others achievements, big or small. When a person is passionate enough to make time to share amazing things with the world it reminds me of our own uniqueness as a race, and that we all have something equally fascinating to share with the world.