Women in STEM: Advancing Equity, Representation, and Opportunity

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“I think of engineers as boys, but since there’s a girl engineer [in my classroom], it opens up my life so I can be one.” Mya, a fifth-grade student in Washington. It’s moments like these that drive Washington STEM as we relentlessly pursue equity and representation in STEM.

In Washington state, roughly 740,000 jobs will be created by 2021 and a third of those jobs are within the STEM fields. The vast majority of those jobs will require competencies in STEM skills. We want to make sure every young girl and woman has the chance to take advantage of this coming wave of opportunity.

The fundamental skills established through a high-quality STEM education will serve those students regardless of their career path. Collaboration, creativity, cultural competency, problem solving, and a firm grasp of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), will prepare students for a 21st century economy.

And yet, so many young women may not see the STEM fields as places where they belong, let alone an area where they can grow and thrive. That’s why we’ve begun the Notable Women in STEM campaign.

The Notable Women in STEM campaign is one of our many initiatives to make sure STEM careers can be a reality for all students in Washington. We sent out an open call across the state to employers, education institutions, and nonprofits to highlight women who shine in the STEM fields.

These STEM rock stars are the basis for a series of profiles that celebrate the diversity and career paths in STEM that are available to all students in Washington. We know that in many cases students who can see themselves reflected in a career are far more likely to pursue that path. And we want every young girl and woman to know that STEM has a place for them.

Right now, we’re travelling across the state to interview these Notable Women in STEM and to hear their stories and create a profile that is true to who they are. The following examples are just a small slice of the amazing women we’ll be highlighting.

Notable Women in STEM

Tina Asiimwe is a nurse manager at Kaiser Permanente Rainier Medical Clinic. As a nurse manager, she has helped transform the medical center into one of the most improved clinics in Kaiser Permanente Washington. Tina is also a Ugandan immigrant who came to Seattle eleven years ago. She has chartered her own way in STEM and serves as a role model for any young woman thinking of pursuing STEM.

Allison Camper is a robotic engineer at McKinstry. Allison was frequently told how her assumed physical restrictions as a woman would prohibit her ability to work in the engineering and construction fields. Her response? “We just have to think about solving those problems in a different way.” When we speak of creativity in STEM, there’s no better example than Allison.

Supporting Women in STEM

Learn more about local organizations like Washington STEM that rely on funding and partnerships to run their programs and provide real-world experiences to educators and students.
Tap into STEM Education Coalition resources to better understand issues related to STEM in the U.S.

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Original contribution by Washington STEM

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Lessons From One Foundation’s Local, Health-focused Philanthropy Efforts

Giving Compass' Take: • Glenn E. Schneider and Nikki Highsmith share lessons from the Horizon Foundation's Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) initiatives aimed to improve Howard County, Maryland. • Can this framework translate across communities? What are the health needs of your community? • Learn more about effectively funding health. In 2010, the Horizon Foundation staff took a routine look at local health data and noticed some troubling trends. Data indicated that most deaths in our community were related to heart disease, cancer, stroke, and/or diabetes. Trends showed increasing rates of hypertension and high cholesterol, alongside increasing rates of unhealthy weight. Worse yet, data also showed that local school-aged children had similar rates of unhealthy weight as those in neighboring counties and throughout the state. For an independent, place-based, health-focused philanthropy like ours, this was grim news. The Horizon Foundation is based in Howard County, Maryland, and we focus our work on its approximately 321,000 residents. In any given year, Howard County has one of the highest median household incomes in the nation. About 95 percent of our residents are high school graduates, and a majority have bachelor’s and other higher-education degrees. According to Money magazine, two of our cities are among the best places to live in America, and our county has won awards for its open spaces, parks, sports culture, recreation facilities, and library system. Evidence suggests that these health determinants should provide relative protection against disease, and yet our local data indicated otherwise. In response, the foundation launched a suite of Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) initiatives in 2012. Our plan included efforts to reform the school system’s wellness policy; reduce sugary drink consumption; improve school food; increase participation in federal school meals programs; enhance pediatricians’ skills related to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of childhood obesity; and make healthier food and drinks more widely available for children and families. Concurrently, we have been working to make physical activity more routine by improving equity in sports participation and increasing physical activity in schools and childcare facilities. We also routinely advocate for “complete streets”—properly designed roads and pathways that allow all walkers, bicyclists, transit users, and motorists to jointly use and safely get from one point to another. Over the years, we learned some useful lessons. Plan for evaluation from the beginning: If it’s worth doing HEAL work, it’s worth measuring its impact. Shrink the change: In their 2010 book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath describe how complex behavioral-change processes require intentional efforts to make hard changes more manageable—what the authors refer to as “shrinking the change.” Advocate for HEAL policy and system change: Investing in advocacy allowed the foundation and our grantees to properly build strong coalitions, organize residents on the ground, engage in social marketing and media advocacy, and win long-lasting improvements in our HEAL environment. Work with state and regional partners to make HEAL changes more “sticky”: At least 57 percent of our residents work and/or spend significant time outside the county. Read the full article about HEAL efforts by Glenn E. Schneider and Nikki Highsmith Vernick at Stanford Social Innovation Review.

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