Eight amazing women visited Seattle World School on the morning of February 15th and energized our girls into considering careers in tech. Since students at Seattle World School come from all over the world and speak so many languages (over 30!), it was especially awesome that some of the speakers had also at some point been newcomers to the U.S. and had had to learn a new language from scratch. This shared experience really helped our girls connect with these women and helped them feel empowered in their ability to overcome obstacles.
We broke the girls into three groups right from the start based on language because we were lucky enough to have presenters who spoke Spanish/Arabic, Vietnamese and Tigrinya. These smaller groups really felt comfortable for our girls and made the interaction between girls and speakers very comfortable and informal. The speakers talked about the importance of being patient (like when you make Vietnamese soup!), the importance of breaking through gender stereotypes (from a beauty pageant winner!) and the importance of not giving up (from two speakers who had originally failed their computer science classes!). Their personal stories were interesting, fun, and inspiring. Thank you Kelly Tran, Allison Adams, Kylie Rassatt, Marta Smith, Holly Brice, Ana Nicacio, Beylul Kbreab, and Harveen Kathuria.
After the event:
