Bi-Weekly Newsletter                                                                 August 21, 2014
In This Issue:
  • Call to Action
  • Women in STEM Events
  • Women in STEM News
  • Resources / Awards
  • NEW: Mentoring Best Practices Tips
  • Guest Blog
  • Engage with MWM! 
Million Women Mentor Events & Calender:

September 18
Million Women Mentors 
Corporate Strategy Call for STEM Mentoring and Engagement in Million Women Mentors Movement

September 22
MWM Leadership Council Meeting   
(Invite Only)

September 22
African First Ladies/STEM and MWM Global Announcements

October 2
Million Women Mentors
Town Hall 2
Mentoring Results 

October 9 & 10
National Diversity Women's Business Leadership Council Conference

October 16
Partner Training Session

October 21
Women in STEM Boston Conference

December 4
State Partners Update to the Nation

January 2015
National Mentoring Month

January 8
MWM Anniversary

January 13
Leadership Council Teleconference

March 8 & 9
International MWM Announcements
 Women in STEM Resources/Awards: 

Pledge To Mentor 
Pledge Card 
Access HERE 
 
Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation Rolls Out Leadership Awards
Series of leadership awards to recognize the leaders advancing opportunities for women in the building industry 
Access HERE  

Women in STEM:
Realizing the Potential
This white paper will give you credible insight and facts for your use. This key document was developed with our lead technology partner TCS.
 Download HERE

Action Guide and Toolkit
Million Women Mentors
20 Hours of Mentoring
 Download HERE

  

100 Women Leaders in STEM 
In celebration of women role models in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), STEMconnector™ published in hard copy and online its inaugura
Access HERE
 
Teach Thought
40 Important STEM Resources For Women
Access HERE

  Office of Science and
Technology Policy 
 Women in STEM: Fact sheets & Reports
Download HERE 
 
STEM Mentoring
How to find a Mentee? 
Access HERE 

STEM Mentoring 
How to find a Mentor? 
Access HERE 

 
Read a Story
OR
Share a Story

Engage With The Million Women Mentors Movement!

 
Partnership information: 
Yinka.Robinson@STEMconnector.org
Are You In?
Almost 170,000 Pledged To Mentor Young Women In STEM
:


I/We Pledge to mentor a girl or young woman in STEM with 20 hours of skills based mentoring.  I will email my pledge to MWM@STEMconnector.org or post it live at www.MillionWomenMentors.org  
 
Once you sign up and pledge to mentor girls and young women in STEM at 
www.MillionWomenMentors.org you've made your pledge officially count as one in a Million. The next step is to find your mentee! 

We are almost at the 170,000 mark in pledges to mentor, thank you! Already over 100 corporate and non-profit partners have signed on to actively engage in mentoring young women and girls in STEM skills. Look for resources and mentor opportunities on our interactive website.
Women in STEM News
Women in STEM
Across the entire country women and young girls are participating in programs that expose them to STEM careers. Through mentoring, our partners and top corporations are working to increase their interest and passion in STEM fields.  
Michelle Obama and Laura Bush, first ladies from different generations and opposing political parties, spoke with one voice Wednesday on the importance of educating women and girls worldwide, saying countries will be more prosperous as a result.

"You have to change attitudes before you can change behaviors,"  

Mrs. Obama  

 

She noted that some 60 million girls, including 30 million in sub-Saharan Africa, do not attend school. The first lady said that until global leaders understand that educating girls is as important as educating boys, "then we will have a lot of work to do."

 

This is how bad the gender gap is at tech companies (Geek Wire)  
Looking over the diversity data released by major tech companies over the past several months paints a bleak picture of gender equality in the tech industry, as illustrated by this chart from Statista. Women make up less than 40 percent of the workforce at Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter, and no more than one-fifth of the technical workforce at those companies. Non-technical employees at those companies are usually around 50 percent women, though Apple is an outlier in that regard with women only making up 35 percent of its non-technical workforce. Microsoft was not included in the above chart because it did not release data that provides a breakdown between technical and non-technical employees.

 
PowerToFly Aims to Find Women Techies Jobs Wherever They Are (Video)(Re/code) 

While there are a lot of new startups getting funding from high-profile investors, PowerToFly is a welcome development, to say the least. Using a website designed to look like a social network - lots of great photos and chatty text - it is aimed at helping women techies across the globe match with companies looking for talent.The twist is that PowerToFly focuses on vetting that talent, often in remote locations, with three rounds of interviews and a code check. The startup is beginning with tech, but hopes to move into other verticals.Milena Berry and Katharine Zaleski have raised $1 million from well-known investors, including Lerer Hippeau Ventures, BuzzFeed's Jonah Peretti and former Washington Post owner Don Graham, as well as several international funders.

 

"We want to change the nature of work overall for women, especially now that all the technology is there to allow people to work - productively- from anywhere," said Zaleski, who noted that the startup has recruited over 300 women from the Middle East, Asia, Europe, India and the U.S.

 
New Study Shows Gap in Specific STEM Skills
In a first-of-its-kind study, Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Rothwell finds that the science, technology, engineering and math labor market suffers from a very particular kind of skills gap. It's not just that there aren't enough skilled workers to fill the jobs; it's that the skills workers have aren't specific enough.  

 

"The big issue about filling jobs that require STEM skills is having a more skills-based approach to training," says Fred Dedrick, executive director of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. The National Fund partners with industry to help build a supply of qualified workers for employers and also promote business practices and public policies that improve career opportunities. 

 
Women in STEM Begins With Girls in STEM: 7 Ways to Support a  Generation of Scientific Young Women. (HuffPost)

There is an issue with trying to determine why STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) is still a four-letter word to women: We're asking the wrong question. We should be asking instead, Why is STEM still a four-letter word to girls? Representing women in technology and science begins with raising girls to become a part of those fields. If you're a woman and belong to the majority of women not employed in a STEM occupation, can you still remember the moment you lost a genuine interest or confidence in those subjects? Well, I can. I often claim to have always been dreadful at studying anything scientific, but that really isn't true. In fact, I used to excel in the science -- I loved everything about it. Until high school, that is. The critical years of shifting between a teenager and a young adult are a main culprit of young girls falling away from STEM.   

  

Apple Shows Off A More Diverse Leadership Team (Fast Company)

Earlier this week, Apple caved into pressure and released its first-ever diversity report. The findings were pretty homogenous, especially among its leadership and tech workers. Dissatisfied with these figures, CEO Tim Cook said the company was actively working to change the makeup of Apple--and, on Friday, followed up by showing off more diversity on the company's executive leadership team. Apple's updated leadership page now includes the mugs and bios of five additional vice presidents, including two women: vice president of environmental initiatives Lisa Jackson, vice president of worldwide human resources Denise Young Smith, vice president of special projects Paul Deneve, vice president and dean of Apple University Joel Podolny, and vice president of hardware technologies Johny Srouji.
 
The Miss Possible Line Of Dolls Inspires Girls To Be Engineers, Pilots, And Programmers (Fast Co.Exist)
Supriya Hobbs and Janna Eaves were engineering students at the University of Illinois when they looked around and realized something that so many females in science and engineering fields run up against: There were very few other women in their classes. Hobbs and Eaves started brainstorming about ways to get girls more involved in engineering, and in 2013, the pair submitted their idea to the Cozad New Venture Competition, a business competition at their school. The Miss Possible line of dolls was born. Starting with a doll modeled after Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie, the line will feature strong female role models from history, along with an accompanying app that has new content for each doll.
 
Each morning this summer, Jazmine Fernandez hopped the subway to downtown Oakland and boarded a shuttle bus bound for Silicon Valley. The youngest of four raised by a single mom who works at Burger King, Fernandez, 18, is a high school senior growing up in the hulking shadow of the Oakland Coliseum. She likes to study mechanical engineering and build robots in school. A couple of friends suggested she apply for Girls Who Code. The non-profit is part of a nascent but growing movement to close the gender gap in the technology industry. Fernandez had never known any software engineers. She wasn't even sure Mexican Americans could get jobs with big technology companies.
 
Stephanie C. Hill calls herself an accidental engineer. The vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin excelled at science and math when she was in school, but she had absolutely no idea how to pursue it as a career. Though her parents were very well-educated and had friends in a variety of professions, they didn't know any engineers. Hill was completely unaware of the career path, and majoring in economics at the University of Maryland. She was planning on becoming an accountant until she took a course in programming and fell in love with it. With the encouragement of mentors and academic counselors, she changed course so she could also study computer science. And that support, she said, made all the difference.
 
Why are there few women programmers? That's a question many tech companies, including tech giant Google, have been asking. In June, the company released the results of a study showing that women make up only 17 percent of Google's tech-related workforce. The gender gap appears to span the entire tech industry. Education Week reports that less than 20 percent of students who took the Advanced Placement computer science exam in 2013 were female. To help combat this disparity, Google is funding Made with Code, a $50 million initiative aimed at helping to close tech's gender gap by encouraging women to pursue careers in computer programming.

I speak to lots of business leaders around the country and the one constant phrase I hear - to the point of being clich� - is that "We are in a war for talent". This is true. Our future is at risk if we don't create and utilize the very best human talent. Also true is Bill Gates' famous comment to a Saudi Arabian business audience: "If you're not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you're not going to get too close to the top." If we really are in a war for talent, then leaving women out of the equation is a great recipe for annihilation. Leaders in the tech sector objectively know this. As do leaders in manufacturing, construction, transportation, and just about any other business sector you can think of.

The big gender gap in the tech industry is well-documented by now. For a variety of reasons, many girls begin to lose interest in [STEM] fields when they reach middle and high school. The gap widens even more when students arrive at college and decide their career paths. That's why efforts like App Camp for Girls are crucial to help young women stay engaged with tech-related subjects. The program brought together 14- and 15-year-old girls from Seattle last week to spend five days learning about mobile app creation. On the final day, teams pitched their ideas to women leaders in technology like Moz CEO Sarah Bird and Porch.com CMO Asha Sharma.  
NEW! Mentoring Best Practices Tips
Mentoring Best Practices Tips
Starting this week and the next 2-3 newsletters we're going to start running the Mentoring Best Practices Tips! Today's advice comes from Chante Chambers and Jasmine Sanders, Vice President of recruitment at Teach For America and Director of Recruitment at Teach For America, respectively.

Being the first person in your family on the path to attend college can be intimidating. You may not know what is required of you during the application process, or what resources are available to you - and family members who want to help aren't able to draw upon their own experiences to do so.

 

For such students, getting to college is only half the battle. Once in an undergraduate setting there are new systems to navigate, new cultures to become acquainted with, and new expectations to live up to. All of this "newness" can be detrimental without the proper supports in place. Nationally, 89 percent of low-income first-generation students leave college within six years without a degree. More than a quarter leave after their first year - four times the dropout rate of higher-income second-generation students.

 

Students who face this challenge deserve to learn how to effectively operate in college, develop their leadership potential, and experience academic equity and access which contribute to successful lives. Mentorship plays a critical role in helping them get there.

 

This past year we helped Teach for America  and Fisk University partner on a first-generation college mentorship students - with several students pursuing STEM degrees. HERE are the top five tips we've learned for helping historically underrepresented students pursue their passion for STEM education.

Guest Blog
By: Sabari Raja
Source: Nepris

When I was in second grade, I just knew I had to get good grades because I didn't want to make my dad upset. When I was in 5th grade getting good grades just became a habit, no questions asked. When I was in 7th grade I just knew I had to become an engineer or a doctor because that is how academic success was measured, that is what my parents, my friends, relatives and my teachers expected of me. I had no idea what an engineer did or the fact that many different types of engineering existed. I had no idea where else science could be applied other than in medicine. I grew up in a culture where I never questioned the teacher or my parents but just accepted the fact that academic success led to a bright future. Looking back I often question which path I would have chosen if I had the exposure that my kids have today.

Today my 6 year old corrects me that a Pedologist is not a foot doctor but a soil scientist! In spite of the exposure that technology brings, kids still lack the understanding of what that world of work looks like, how what they learn in the classroom applies in the workplace and what kind of jobs and careers exist that is related to their classroom learning . While career days and field trips can give them some of this exposure, it is not cost effective or scalable to be integrated into the everyday classroom.

 

With Nepris, we are bridging this gap and giving teachers a tool to reach out to industry professionals, to bring their knowledge into the classroom as often as they can. Its exciting to see how many teachers are creating these rare moments of discovery for their students through Nepris. A second grade classroom learning about Rocks virtually connect with a Geologist, a 5th grade classroom learning about Measurements talk to a Fashion Designer, a 6th grade classroom building solar powered houses virtually invite a LEED certified architect to discuss the project, a high school AP chemistry class connects with a Cosmetic Chemist, a CTE class invites a panel of industrial engineers to evaluate their student projects. The possibilities are endless! See for yourself a sample of recorded sessions where classrooms have connected live with industry professionals. Read more and watch the videos here!