Why We Should All Be STEMinists

everybody how's a positive pretty so far [Applause] [Music] plus you guys have done a lot of that work here it is good now right now in addition to all the great volunteers included song is difficult actually aha four conspirators are here so Mike Dallas Eric gives in this demo please [Music] [Applause] most people that do this work but you know the co-conspirators that things late at night including them you know putting people out for places and carrying out the garbage and whatever else is necessary those are pretty good so thanks again also for being hosted by Cerner you guys are probably aware is facilities are something gorgeous I want to break everything up but the cabinet's

here when I make a couple calls service announcements but I'd like to thank Sarah for a bunch of security professionals to take over the day for on a Saturday at a place that is still pretty new obviously so in tribute to be that way so thank you all right so I have the pleasure of announcing I don't know if it was announced before but at the end of today there's going to be alcohol downstairs for everyone which is yeah okay and now also an exciting announcement so but important too we want everyone to be responsible and safe and so if anyone doesn't feel like that they feel comfortable driving afterwards you can leave your car here in order to

do that though you need to fill out a flier that is at the desk in the event space like the effect support desk that is near the restrooms you can get a fire there and fill up these we want you to take advantage of that if you need it what we would rather you not do though is take advantage of it if you are not drinking you just want to like leave your car here to go someplace else tonight and pick it up tomorrow the reason being is that it's going to be a hassle to pick up your car tomorrow because while the gates were open today and you were able to come through set up

with b-sides tomorrow they were like the East Side's was yesterday what are you doing here and security will have to escort you individually to your cars and stuff so take advantage of it if you need it we really want you to be responsible tonight otherwise have fun and thanks for being there so there's no way to get away from the walk of shame that's happening so I would love to introduce somebody that I'm excited to watch this presentation there's a lot of interesting things I have a daughter who's 14 she knows all the wrong things about the cybersecurity industry that she's not into stem enough but she's done a right I thought no whole list of

other things that she does all of my stories so it's really interesting to me when somebody has taken the time and the benefit of the energy of the community to foster them and bring them along to a place where that are ready to present to talk about that in a way that's compelling for other young girls and other women as well as the rest of us that need to pay attention to these things more about recruiting so I'd love to introduce [Applause] okay you mean awesome okay so hello as he said I'm Ruby Rios so if you happen to be a part of the baby boomer generation no I do not understand CH slang either but you a few are fi

baby boomer generation you may have grown up hearing the following female doctors for posture it's like good sir boys are supposed to be doctors and girls are supposed to be nurses at least this is how I imagine people spoke in the 1960s and the state supported this idea in 1970 less than ten percent of doctors in the u.s. are female even whereas plenty if people believe that girls shouldn't become doctors negative stereotypes said that women we're too emotional would not be able to handle seeing people in pain and that men were just generally better suited to becoming doctors but what has happened since then the numbers of females graduating from medical school has steadily increased

and these names about 50% of medical school graduates are female and I'm betting that most of you here don't think it's purpose there's anything for Foster's about being a female doctor it seems pretty clear that we have disproven those negative stereotypes about females in the medical field however let's look at what happens we had computer science to this grass according to the National Center for Women in information technology the number of females studying computer science has mostly decline is about 1984 and since in 2017 only 26% of professional computing occupations in the US were held by limited now that there are a few tears of sweats happens in the 1980s for one thing this was

around the time that the micro computers began replacing with giant IBM mainframe computers the soda bomb on your left shows the first eleven employees at Microsoft and Wow yes two of them are female one of them was the documentation writer and the other was a bookkeeper another thing that has happened that happened in the 1980s was the beginning of video gamer culture these deals are heavily marketed towards boys and then the movies of the 1980s start to reinforce this new stereotype of computer nerds as socially inept boys giving us movie characters like these and just like several decades ago with doctors there are currently people who believe that men are simply better suited than than women to work in tech

last year's two famous Google memo literally said that and for females who are currently working in or studying in this field many are having to deal with not being taken seriously with big overlooked for leadership roles and even worse with forms of harassment clearly this industry needs to improve so these stereotypes and these issues have an effect on females computing it's led to this girls in elementary school show a strong interest in studying computing but nearly all of them loses interest by the time they reach college by that they equate they become convinced that this field is not for them the good news is that there are lots of people and organizations that are working to turn the tide

these include Colonel sucrose which offers summer in America programs and after-school programs for girls in the sixth through twelfth grades the National Center for Women in information technology which offers awards both at the high school and collegiate levels for girls as an interest in computing in Kansas City's own girls and tech KC movement which offers camps and other opportunities for girls right here in Kansas City even the Girl Scouts of America is working toward resolving this if introduced 23 new STEM related merit badges last year including some badges the cyber security with all the attention being given to it it might be tempting to think that the girls in tech issue is being soft and in some ways it

is the movement to bring more girls to take technology has gained a lot of traction and there have been some success stories Rosie foods annual report released this month that we are on track to achieve gender parity in stem by 2027 and for the third year in a row Kansas City was liberated by personal finance company smart assets as a number two city for women in tech to work but working towards a solution and having the problem solved are two different things we need to be cognizant of the girls that's our problem every day and work every day to solve it well I'm not suggesting that we all go and volunteer and girls in the stem organization every

day there are things that we can do that help and that's bad to you about that first let's try to put this issue in perspective from my point of view it could be argued that women in tech aren't as bad off as them in another field Wow our numbers are low women in tech have a relatively through lucrative career and it could be argued that we have basis may challenge in the women in industries such as the entertainment industry in the military it is snail cover but on the other hand technology is literally about leading society towards a better future so white hands our industry be leading all other industries when it comes to diversity in our workplace white kids

our tech teams be the model for other industries to follow instead of the boys club model before we go any further I'd like to hear from a few of you why do you think it's important to bring more women into technology I'll take about three responses

so to say once barrel things is that I mean a society where there is not I think different experiences to say

thanks I just want to follow up on that point basically breaking out of habitual patterns and sort of having to actually check ourselves more frequently because we're not in a boys club and we can't just clad in and slap each other on the back and we actually have to think about the fact that we are in a society when we're not presented with the same your back face that I see the mirror every day when I wake up

the previous two answers I also think we're great but also if the tech industry is where jobs should go in general where humanity should go which I think it is you can't really accomplish that with amongst on behalf of the world

I want the best and who they can find right half of the population is marking that that would

thank you guys those are some great answers of course what's up man

she also attended

that woman and those are all great points and there are some as somebody else mentioned Karen Katelyn spoke this in this very space a few months ago and while there are definitely more reason to unless I'm in a kind of competence with some of her reasons so here's a few of the reason that she provides for why women need to be intact so better problem solving when women are part of a team they it's more effective at problem solving this is determined by an MIT Carnegie Mellon and Union College study better decision-making they risk use make better decisions 60% of the time that lead to better business results according to a clover brown study better financial performance a

catalyst study showed that companies with the most number of women in cedar senior in leadership positions were financially better off the companies with the least number in the larger candidate pool the National Center for Women in information technology reported that they're expected to be 3.5 million computing real computing related opening drop the winnings in the u.s. by 2026 and only 17% of these jobs can be filled by us computing a bachelor's degree recipients by 2026 so there are a lot of tech jobs open so why not cast the widest possible net so with these great reasons to get more girls at the Tech what are we currently doing to make this happen well as a girl tech myself I

think sharing my own tech story I provide a little bit of an insight I've spent my whole life in Kansas t the farthest I've ever moved is literally across the book and despite what that picture on the left might lead you to believe as a child I wasn't the kid you these have expected to go into a stem career I like to art singing dancing something you want necessarily relate to a stem career I got into this field primarily out of luck my dad worked in IT and he believed that it was important that I had those skills so he's 9:00 p.m. for a one-week girls-only app development camp where I learned how to combine my love of the Arts with

computing and when such a positive experience at that camp then I went on to do more camps and classes despite many time speak the only girl in the room I constantly reminded myself of how fun an initial coding experience was where I felt safe and listened to so later when the opportunity presented itself I went back and volunteered at those initial campus with the Kansas City submarines and then some after a summer of helping them the Kansas City stem alliance offered me the opportunity to meet Malala the Nobel Peace Prize winner for Pakistan's but all the one who know about these price because she stood up there girls rights to be educated and she inspired

me to do more in my own community so I started to girls who quit clubs in the Kansas City area and after that I continued to have some cool experiences with the help of your lilo centrum Center and figured out how to leave school two hours early every day to work his internship here at CERN I know it was the best deal ever they worked with all those guys at the bottom photo in cybersecurity and with the help with my friend Erin Smith I co-founded KC semanas which is a group that helps girls not only learn about technology but about entrepreneurship and global issues and because of all the work networking at Debbie can see I was able

to have some national and national recognition I was selected as one of twenty girls sit and the white girls team camp in Malawi Africa where I spent three weeks studying other organizations like Google NASA and South the Department of State the National Society of microbiology and the UN's grow up campaign among the others if so my story and then head excuse Casey TEDx women tasty empathetic Pittsburgh state stages I was a 20-18 XI plus plus include fellow and the National Center for Women and information technology aspirations in computing national award winner and it because of all this I was named as Kansas City's youngest ever 30th under 30 so clearly there are opportunities available for girls through stem and it

seems like we should be good right with all of this work should it be considering ourselves good on that pole girls and texting I'm saying though because honestly from what I've learned from working with these organizations I don't think organizations alone are going to fix this issue organizations for girls system focused primarily on bringing more girls this is a tech pipeline but not necessarily on retention now we ve the focus on supporting girls once they are in the tech pipeline and supporting girls once they are in those valens Amba native environments because if we don't do that many of these girls will dip their toe in to attack job design it's not a comfortable place to be and we'll lose

them we put so much attention in these programs on teaching some of the basic tech skills and that's great but what girls need to based on words in stem they will be in classrooms where they are in the minority we prepared them for what for that experience because it's a challenge to be the only girl in the room let me share a couple examples for my own experiences just this year my school started a program called stream nights which stands for science technology religion engineering arts and mathematics don't ask me a lot of people keep feeling the need to add more letters acronym I heard the acronym hamster the other day never supply it are we keep up

with this but the stream nights are to encourage to hear hi students to take on engineering projects after school in groups as soon as the first being as an observer and I was disappointed to see that every attendee was family twenty guys and no girls however my hopes returned about fifty minutes later when two girls walked in late so now there is one female out of every 11 people in the room which is pretty good compared to some sub classrooms but during the meeting they whirled two groups to raise their projects and the two girls were split up a couple weeks later the principal of my school approached me he told me that two girls had left the stream program

apparently one girl felt awkward walking into the classroom late and then later got frustrated by guys not carrying her ideas she decided she didn't want to attend anymore and the other girl decided that because she did not want to be the only girl in the room he encouraged me to talk about my own story as a way of helping hoping helping them to stay in the program see that really loves me this heart is because it reminded me of my own experiences I see what walked in late to coding classrooms and felt out of place I when I was in the seventh grade I went through the exact same struggle of feeling like I was being wasn't exactly trouble not

feeling like I was being less than two in a group full of guys but I was in the seventh grade a little over five years ago you can't tell me their problem is going when five years later girls are still facing the same struggles that I face and reminded me that bringing girls at the text just won't fix this now let me give you a different example here is picture at my grocery could clip from last year the club got smaller and here went on but we had a basement members who showed up regularly now you might have noticed something about that photo in our girls who code club we had a dude named Isaac see our club is promoted to

girls but not limited to girls and I think was a perfect example of a male ally I think Isaac is going to solve our girls ethnic issue not even per se but he won't be part of the solution girls supporting other girls yes but also fully supporting girls I had learned how to do that in those club meetings we talked about the problems that girl's face in sex and Isaac was there to listen so that was last year and this year we have even more guys in our club but nothing has changed the guys will be any more of a say in projects than girls do everyone respects each other and we don't interrupt each

other so if there really saw this growth in the tech issue I think we need a couple of things we need a people who are cognizant of the stereotypes and their problems intact and stand up against them we need people who are willing to make small simple changes to their behaviors whether it is in your computer science classrooms or in your techniques we need to teach our girls to detect to be brave and not perfect and we need to teach our voice to be talent so let's talk about a few things that we can all do in our classrooms in our meeting rooms to make this happen let's talk about networking or as US students

call it socializing most people tend to form what we call just like P networks if form relationships based off with having common interests common hobbies or similar algorithms and many of us spend time with networks outside of work or outside of school I'm not placing blame here but this 10 soccer pretty naturally but we need to recognize that this behavior creates a barrier for those people who aren't just like me people who did have similar upper needs or similar interests and hobbies and if we're not careful it can limit who we have in leadership positions but there are some few small simple changes we can do to fix this first think about how you can reach the

diversity of your network get to know people who are just like me it takes a little bit more effort but it's not that difficult introduce yourself make conversations and get to know them how much your thumb connect on social media and LinkedIn and if you happen to be in a leadership role think about the people you give stretch assignments to since it's so structured segments that often lead to career advancements okay now let's talk about meeting rooms in the workplace we have a lot of meetings and in the classroom not so much but we do have group projects and group chats let's talk about how we communicate in these spaces and especially how we should dump

communicate there's a church that occasionally gets thrown around calm banter options it's when in a group of male tops over a female it doesn't let her finish her thoughts and this photo that's probably the famous most famous ever manager option in history when Kanye West interrupted Taylor speech when she was accepting an award is he believed that she knew better who deserved that award another problem that occasionally happens is called bro creations this is one of male 3 states that females okay next is redirections which this is when in a meeting the male directs this question to another male but it's clear that the female husband in the room has more expertise and lastly there are

sexist jokes and sexist comments it might be fun and you might commit the female in the room can handle it but it's unnecessary and it hurts the work environment if people think that this behavior is okay over the time these things can build up and they really do cause a lot of be Mauston to debate whether or not they should stay in fact so what can we do about this again we're talking about small simple changes try some of these at your next meeting and I wish I hadn't said and I think I'd like to hear your hand must finish what you were saying before yes that was the point that and I made earlier my head is the expert let's

ask her and then if you think of a sexist joke or a sexist comment maybe choose not to say it think before you speak it's a skill we've learned since kindergarten next let's talk about office housework so what do I mean by this I mean taking notes ordering and bringing the food scheduling meetings and organising celebrations many times the guys will assume that the female in the group doesn't mind doing these things but that doesn't make it fair in fact when you regularly make the female take notes or organize celebrations it sends a message to the team and she's not an equal member now as taking notes you're scheduling meetings happens to be the females job that's perfectly okay

but if it's not then make this a shared responsibility take turn set up a rotation and don't want the guys wiggle out of their terms I don't have good and right is not an excuse to get out of it everybody has a keyboard nowadays if you're a tech and it's somebody's ego is to inflate it to do some of this busy work to call it a stretch assignment since I can play I want you to think about something I'm a little bit of a geek so I'm a big fan of superheroes but when we look at the Tower of superheroes with the use of technology we're pretty close to achieving a lot of the superhuman feats we see in our favorite

comic books flying we can do that super-strength check hi Annie pretty gosh-darn klutz you might think that you are a superhero every day when you go into work actually don't when I go into my internship but the knowledge that we have is a superpower we can control technology and with that power we have the 100% no joke the ability to change the world and maybe you were even better than the superheroes we see because we can share our our we can teach others to be superheroes as well it can pass them our knowledge of technology and the technology that we use and what might not have an equal number of male and female superpower superheroes on the

screen we can realize and as superheroes we need to use our power responsibly and our voices responsibly you've probably heard the quote before with great power comes great responsibility made to help the people in need and speak act and make decisions on behalf of the people who don't have this power be brave be kind and be persistent in the 1970s they never believed that a girl could be a doctor down we don't even doubt it and we don't even think twice about it today we make sure that no girl doubts again that she can be a computer scientist I'd love to save the day would no person ever has either thank you and I'll be happy to

take any questions [Applause]

I work for a large insurance company and one of the aspects of the diversity inclusion program at our company was analysis on wage gap data and the CEO recently the conference they mentioned that it's more of a representation issue at our particular company as opposed to a wage gap issue but because of the representation weight the question I have is the statistics are often able to speak to bias if people are anti women in SEM they can say well this that or the other and they can pull up statistics you have any feedback on how we can be better stewards of the data and speaks to the truth I think kind of what we need to do is we need to make

sure that we look at both sides and we fact check ourselves just kind of like what we've done with fake news people have those biases either for or against girls and they'll figure out how to bring up the data accordingly so continuing to make sure that we're on both sides that we back took ourselves that we continue to make sure that the data that we see is actually accurate so awesome thank you guys so much [Applause] [Music] [Applause]