were packing up our robot for
competition a mentor John said to me do
you do this because your dad wants you
to be like a boy the answer is of course
not I have a little brother who does
theater and musicals and whatever else
he’s actually in one right now my
parents and renters are incredibly
supportive of what I do at wave but I
guess that’s the point to begin with no
one’s going to ask you if you’re doing
robotics because your mom wants you to
be like a girl and very few people are
gonna see a little girl and think yeah
she looks like an engineer so my
freshman year which which was only two
years ago I signed up for all the
activities that my friends did starting
with Orchestra I played the viola and if
you don’t know what that is google it I
also dabbled in the Arts I tried out
drawing took an art class my freshman
year I even learned a little bit of
guitar and I played piano and I did
forensics which is a sort of a speaking
competition a little bit easier than
what I’m doing right now I would never
have described myself as girly and I
still won’t
despite the eye makeup that I’m sporting
right now I was just a kid who didn’t
know what I wanted to do and I was just
a girl who hadn’t been forced into
engineering opportunities then one day a
kid in my biology class would not shut
up about Wave robotics every single day
he’d go I need somebody to join
programming I don’t want to be the only
programmer next year I need somebody to
join way with me now I knew that wave
was a sh kosh’s high school FIRST
Robotics program but I decided to join
just to learn more little did I know
that this would be a turning point for
myself and our community
robots engineering and me change can be
initiated by commitment
from a single person and looking back
into history we can see that it is true
from the iconic rosie the riveter as men
were pulled away to fight during World
War two women stepped up into new
industrial jobs while this had happened
on a much smaller scale during World War
one this was the first time that women
were really stepping up into these roles
and it definitely showed by 1945 the
workforce was nearly 37 percent female
but that’s not the most drastic change
in the aviation industry prior to World
War one women made up with less than 1%
but by 1943 they made up nearly 65
percent but this wasn’t because aunt
Bess D was like I want to work in
aviation today rather it was due to an
intense courtship of women by employers
in government which created that change
magazines would write slogans and
articles to entice women into the
workforce and this is important to my
speech because it proves that the
demographic of a field can be changed
whether by positive propaganda or a
change in the tide along with Rosie the
Riveter there are countless other women
who have been hidden by the curtains of
time and others who peek through
among their ranks are two-time Nobel
Prize winner Marie Curie
first American woman in space Sally Ride
and one you may not have heard of
legendary test pilot
Jerry Cobb these women’s stories are
inspiring and cannot be washed away but
I only have 14 minutes left so I can’t
go into all their stories so we’ll focus
on one more woman Margaret Hamilton she
is incredible and she should have a
she was a business owner a mother of two
children and a engineer and she got a
job working at Harvard to support her
husband up sorry she got a job working
at MIT to support her husband as he went
through Harvard Law which is pretty
incredible because I would love to go to
MIT much less work as a programmer there
at MIT
she was specifically responsible for
code for the Apollo command modules and
she worked on the actual onboard flight
software so she’s helped land men on the
moon constantly inventing and
reinventing the ideas that are now the
cores of computer programming while she
helped land the man on the moon she also
helps save them during Apollo 8 when Jim
Lovell accidentally called a launch
command while in the middle of flight
Hamilton helped save the day they there
to buy reuploading navigational data and
the thrust of flight went without strife
Hamilton was a pioneer both in her life
and at NASA and in the field she created
software engineering which is something
that I might want to go into someday so
I know I said I was only going to talk
about one woman but it turns out I
actually forgot about Admiral Grace
Hopper not sure how anyone does that but
I managed it animal Grace Hopper while
you may not all have heard of her is an
incredible woman her accomplishments
start when she got a PhD in mathematics
from Yale all the way in 1934 she was
she has received over 30 honorary
Doctorate degrees she also was a member
of the u.s. Navy and created the world’s
first operational compiler now that’s
pretty cool because it takes the code
that you write in a programming language
like I do for our robots and translates
it into the language that a robot or
machine can use so a lot of ones and
zeroes hopper is just another incredible
woman that we sometimes forget about
we have to remember that today that
there are incredible women too and there
aren’t enough of them so what we have to
do is create a change for them to be
able to peek through one place where
I’ve sort of learned about how
engineering works was Wave robotics and
a lot of it was thanks to an amazing
mentor I had I was sucked in to a
robotics I got sucked in by my mentors I
was sucked in by two extraordinary
senior boys who programmed the very best
autonomous program for this robot and I
was Pro I was sucked in by the most
awesome engineer my mentor Kelly I got
the X the exposure that I just hadn’t
gotten previously and I realized that
this was something that I could do
before
I hadn’t really been exposed to anything
that I just really liked I thought maybe
I could be a journalist cuz I’m in the
school newspaper and I mean it’s not
right but I just couldn’t see myself
doing that long term with wave I found a
passion surrounded by guys and that’s
the thing STEM science technology
engineering and mathematics are all
male-dominated fields but they don’t
have to be we need to remember the girls
have the interest and the talent to be
involved in stem just like anyone else
here is where I could spout dozens maybe
even hundreds of statistics at you but
you might fall asleep so I’ll try to
keep it short
woman hold Wes than 25% of STEM jobs and
in 2013 three short years ago women held
only 12% of jobs in engineering but we
can change that remember Rosie the
Riveter change can clearly happen but
what we have to do is create that change
because if we don’t who
and that changed it can be significant
in someone’s life it can change their
whole world it can show them
opportunities that they didn’t know
existed and it will say it’s okay to try
something new it’s okay to hypothesize
it’s okay to innovate it’s definitely
okay to fail and it’s okay that I am a
girl and that I want to do this through
small scale changes in our environment
we can change the environment around us
and make better opportunities for
everyone around us but as I said before
we have to start somewhere how many
people here actually knew who Admiral
Hopper was great and who thought that
Jerry Cobb was a man I’ll admit that
both of them got me the first time I
heard of them and this is because of the
ways our beliefs are formed our implicit
bias is the reason we think of these
iconic figures as men our attitudes and
our backgrounds affect our actions and
our decisions all subconsciously but
that can change one way that’s changing
is mass media today on TV we see a show
about a girl who’s pitching in the big
leagues and we should see a bazinga show
about a smart guy with an even smarter
girlfriend who just happens to be a
neuroscientist in real life she also
knows three languages Wow
Society teaches us lies what girls can’t
do that and that’s just not true early
exposure to phenomenal women like the
one in Big Bang Theory that I mentioned
and I’m not allowed to say the name of
that so as well as Admiral Hoffer and my
mentor Kelly can help change that
implicit bias creating social relevance
and these fields can help cultivate a
sense of belonging which is incredibly
important for adults to take
opportunities to be role models in
fields such as stem can help create a
better environment for everyone
at wave I’ve had the phenomenal
opportunity to have that experience I
have worked with mentors and they’ve
helped me find my passion and that
brings me to the next point in girls a
growth mindset is also incredibly
important which can be also cultivated
by parents encouraging us to do that
hard stuff and once we find an interest
support us as our passion grows we will
work on self-improvement we’ll be driven
to succeed just like anyone else help us
pave the way to brilliance by
introducing girls to stem encouraged us
to do hard stuff like math and science
and challenge us with opportunities to
learn push us into that machine shop and
hand us a tool as I said before exposure
is incredibly important and one pretty
easy example of that is myself I don’t
think I ever would have figured out what
I wanted to do with my life had I had
not inadvertently been forced into
joining Wave robotics knowing and
learning about what you want or maybe
you think you want to do we’re just
trying it out
it is incredibly important no matter who
you are or what it is that you want to
do to girls while there’s not a whole
lot of you in the audience my advice is
to take every opportunity to learn
whether it’s just by fooling around with
tools or it’s by meeting and working
with great women in the field you want
to go into like my mentor Kelly stick
with it if you liked it share it with
your friends because a lot of times all
we need is that nudge and that
opportunity one place where I’ve
experienced the sense of belonging that
I mentioned before was an all-girls
competition in 2015 which you can see
some of the awards we went up there it
was a phenomenal experience I have felt
comfortable in my skin
doing something that I really love to do
despite the fact that I was barely a
sophomore
it was an incredible experience and I
learned so much from the people around
me and I was inspired by the people at
the competition there I had the
opportunity to do something called
operating the robot and the way that
works is there’s a driver there’s an
operator driver drives the robot like
you drive a car the operator does the
auxiliary stuff like changing the radio
I was the one who changed the radio and
it was phenomenal it totally gave me a
confidence boost I had an amazing time
and so when we went back in 2016 which I
don’t have a picture of I’m sorry haha I
think I attended with a little bit more
confidence this year I had the
opportunity to be the operator for our
2016 robot throughout the regular season
so that was incredible
so I stepped in to this competition just
feeling more confident and being able to
share the knowledge that I gained in the
past year with other girls and it was
just it was just great I know I’m
gushing the best part along with
learning was that I felt really
comfortable and there was no guys trying
to shove their way into my spot and
nobody was trying to hit on me so that
was pretty great every while every girl
knows that the real world isn’t like in
all-girls competition it’s fun to
pretend for a moment but of course there
will be roadblocks there will be plenty
of roadblocks there will be guys telling
you you only get to do this because
you’re a girl I’ve gotten that one quite
a few times and the other hand there’ll
be guys holding the door open to help
you which is a little bit of an internal
conflict because I want to have the same
opportunities they do but and I also
want to make the same amount as they do
once again to the workforce maybe a
little bit more but but only because I
but we can’t let any of that stop us
define us or do anything more than help
us along because there is a whole wide
world out there and I’m not gonna let
anyone or anything stop me from reaching
it so this past year as I mentioned
before I had the phenomenal opportunity
to operate our 2016 robot and thanks to
a lot of encouragement from my parents
from mentors from peers I was actually
the first girl ever to be in that
position on my team so that was pretty
sweet this year I took yet another step
out of my comfort zone by running for
this is only because a lot of support
from people like my parents who let me
stay out till 10 p.m. working on a robot
sometimes
10:32 my mentors and to my peers and I
just want to inspire others like they
inspired me to learn Wow I’ve been
impacted hugely by wave it’s people like
my good friend Becca who have really
pushed me into those positions when I
joined the team I was a freshman and she
was a junior so she was like ancient and
she was the first person on the team who
actually talked to me and that made me
realize that feeling comfortable in your
environment does wonders to how much you
want to learn and it also helps us
remember that we’re here to be a person
and do that work no matter our gender
when I joined wave I was very quiet and
very very shy and look at me now
I was impacted hugely as I said before
but it’s Becca it’s is Becca who has
blown me away I’m starting to run out of
time but I have to tell this story when
I started writing this TEDx talk I asked
Becca if I could talk about her and she
said future resume was mentioned by a
TEDx talk
she was amazing she joined our team as a
sophomore thanks to a series of
coincidences culminating with her going
to a meeting and finding a family she
finished paying off her detentions
halfway through her senior year
those were accumulated her freshman year
she’s amazing and she’s attending uw
Platteville right now I’m so incredibly
proud we’ve showed her a greater world
as Gandhi said we need not to see to
wait what others do we need to do it
ourselves we need to be that change thank you