Strong, smart, and bold with Girls Inc.

Today I was honored at Girls Inc. for the work that I do in STEM education for middle school girls. This honor is for my work with the Philadelphia chapter of Girls Inc. in which we are building a STEM University program at Drexel that serves underrepresented girls from the city. The program is made possible by many dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers from the Drexel Community, especially my good friend and colleague Kim Spina, without whom it would not be possible.

So today I got to speak to a room full of folks about why I do it and I got some great recognition in the process. I wish that I'd had the wherewithal to say something about the people who have helped me make the STEM University possible- a few of them were in the room as guests of Drexel University's College of Engineering sponsored table. Since I didn't give them an H/T at the ceremony, I'll mention them here:

Kim Spina, co-organizer and manager extraordinaire

Chris Fiori, who taught the girls about concrete (they got to mix cement and make concrete)

Nariman Mostafavi and Hamed Yassaghi, who taught the girls about bridges (with spaghetti)

Shannon Capps, who taught the girls about hydraulic fracking

Ezra Wood, who taught the girls about chemistry using dry ice

Of course there were many others, who were not in the room, who were part of the STEM University last year, and who will be joining us again this year. Plus some new folks! I'm really excited to see how this evolves and grows.

Below is a copy of the 5 minute speech I gave to accept the award.

*****

Thank you so much for this honor. I’m so inspired and awed by the energy in this room. I’d like to tell you a little story about myself and why I came to do STEM education with Girls Inc.

When I was growing up in Nigeria, we had one radio (no TV or other electronic things in our house). Our family loved that radio, as it was our one connection to the outside world. So I guess it’s a testament to my parents’ trust that they would let me take it apart and put it back together again. Again and again. The stakes were so high, but I was always able to put it back together. I continued to tinker with everyday objects and in our neighborhood, I became known as the “engineer”. If someone’s remote control toy was broken, I was the one who was asked to repair it.

When we moved to the United States, I was 12 and very self-assured. Then 13 happened. And everything kind of sucked. I began to question my abilities to make, build, and fix things, and I also started wondering if this was something that girls did. I was the only girl in my engineering drawing class in middle school. And I dropped out of the automotive electives in high school because there were no coveralls that fit teenage girls and I was too embarrassed to ask the instructor if there were other options. I began to feel like I wasn’t that good at tinkering, and that maybe I was a STEM imposter.

I went to college for engineering, because I’m an immigrant with strict immigrant parents, and I could really only consider becoming a doctor or an engineer. When I graduated, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I went to graduate school. But graduate school isn’t the place to “find yourself”, so I quit after a year and half. I started working in an engineering firm, but I found that experience to be isolating- once again, I was the only woman in my division, except for the administrative assistant. So, I quit again.

This time, instead of finding another job, I just got into my car and drove around the country for six months. When I ran out of money, I found a job teaching art at an eco-camp on the coast of Maine. I was surprised to find that I liked connecting with kids and figuring out how to motivate them to make things from found objects. So much so that I was offered a position to stay on as the director of the art programs for the camp’s academic year outreach.

I was thinking about the offer when I was called into the office of the camp foundation’s director. He told me that someone had tracked me down and urgently needed to speak to me. Who was this person and how did they find me? It turns out there were two people in my professional life who kept track of me, despite my utter disregard for keeping in touch. One was my advisor at grad school and the other was my mentor at undergrad. They had chatted with each other about me and decided collectively that they needed to make sure that I didn’t drop out (of higher education, of engineering, of a career in STEM). So they contacted their colleague in California, who was doing engineering work in an architecture school.

That’s how I found myself on the other side of the country, at UC Berkeley, studying computational design for the next seven years of my life. Eventually I did get to become an engineer, even though the path was often difficult and lonely, and I never got used to being the only girl.

5 years ago, I heard a girl at a Lego robotics camp say, I don’t belong here. She was the only girl. That’s when I decided to organize a STEM camp exclusively for middle school girls: because I don’t want to hear “I don’t belong” ever again. I don’t want tinkerers and builders to feel like they’re imposters just because they are the only girls in the room. And even when they are, I want them to feel strong, smart and bold, the way I did when I was a budding 12-year-old engineer.

Thank you.