Girls in TE 2017

     We're so excited to partner with Girls in TE! Sarah and Cindy have been awesome enough to write a blog post about their outreach event.

About Us
     This past summer, Ms. Sarah Chun attended the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Research program and had the unique experience of creating a poverty detecting computer-vision algorithm in regards to Mapping Poverty in Uganda based on features extracted from Google Satellite Images. Ms. Cindy Xie is an award-winning graphic designer and has competed in multiple hackathons across the nation. Together, they hope to bring Girls In TE to their home in Ontario, Canada in order to encourage local girls to pursue the future field of computer science and engineering.

Girls in TE
     Girls in TE is a growing organization that is based in London, Ontario to fill the need for gender diversity programs in technology and engineering within our city. Although our organization is quite young, our founders have great expertise in the area of gender diversity initiatives in technology and engineering.

Inspiration
     Through attending different STEM-outreach events all throughout Canada, Girls in TE realized that there weren’t many technology opportunities for high school girls specifically in Ontario. Ms. Chun is also a mentor at Ladies Learning Code, where most opportunities were geared towards children (ages K-8) and young professionals (18+). So, we decided to fill in this gap by creating a non-profit organization that is dedicated to encouraging high school girls to pursue TE careers.

Our inaugural event: the Girls in TE Career Talk 
     On December 5th, Girls in TE hosted its inaugural event for high school girls throughout Ontario called the Girls in TE Career Talk. We invited six inspirational women from the fields of technology and engineering to talk about their career passages as a woman in TE. We decided to make the Girls in TE Career Talk as our first event to inform high school girls about the careers of TE. Through a Coding Conversation and a Q&A, girls were successfully informed. Girls in TE was featured on a local talk show in London, Ontario called RogersTV and on FMX, a radio station. Girls in TE is different because it is made for high school girls. While there are many STEM initiatives, there aren’t many for high schoolers, which is an extremely critical time in one’s life. It’s the time for one to make life-changing decisions. Our purpose is to inspire girls to pursue careers in TE.

Outcomes
     The event was an incredible success, thanks to our community partners and Girls in TE’s event volunteers & coordinators. Our keynote speaker, Dr. Cecile Freeman, a Google Software Engineer, who inspired the high school girls with reasons why we need more women in the technology and engineering fields. As event organizers, we learned that high school girls in London feel that they want more opportunities for them to develop technical skills that would help them in their career.

Future plans
     After our inaugural event, the executive team at Girls in TE are planning a yearly schedule of intensive events catered for high school girls, all across Ontario, Canada. Our collaborations with community organizations include Google, 3M, and GoodNeighbours Canada. We hope to host many technical workshops (Java, Python, 3-D Printing, and Robotics), Hackathons, Field Trips to Tech Company Headquarters, and of course our annual Career Talk.

Thanks again to Girls in TE. We're looking forward to many more exciting events!