Work and life blends always make for special days- and tonight was one of those great nights! I'm proud and pleased to be serving with a wonderful group of women to focus on STEM for girls @ The Works. We recognize the importance of encouraging girls to follow STEM careers and have confidence in their STEM skills. Awareness and programming is needed to help prepare our amazing young women.
Tonight a program was presented at the Newark High School- Dream Big: A career Night For Girls" and I loved it! I loved it for my girls, me, the other girls and women there. Clare was invited through school- thank goodness I opened the email that invited us! I admit to struggling to keep up with all the comings and goings - no doubt I was meant to be there tonight. As soon as I realized what the invite was we forwarded to others on the committee- thrilled to say five of us were there- two of us with girls.
The evening had three main components: a screening of a wonderful documentary; a local successful woman sharing important advice and opportunity for girls to reflect and share. We were able to watch The Empowerment Project- https://indieflix.com/empowermentproject/ strong women on a journey documenting to share remarkable women with the "why" this is important. The women were inspiring- Clare and Charlotte thought so too! Joan Franks, VP with Park National Bank, encouraged girls to stay positive and choose positive friends and co-workers, to take care of themselves and to engage in success circles. Taking time to reflect with our girls was an important part of the night and very telling for me. I'm not sure I encourage my girls to dream big enough. It wasn't an easy task for them to complete. It was wonderful to hear many YES Clubhouse young women share their aspirations and learn about their role models. I so valued our female family being there to support and cheer on the young women confident to stand up and share.
This will be a future blog topic as The Works' programming evolves and I take more actions to share, engage, encourage other girls and women to follow their dreams, dream bigger and develop the important skills they possess to have successful STEM careers! The Works is key to this as the Works utilizes history and art as part of the model to achieve success in STEM. The remarkable mathematician inspired me tonight- she played the cello for 10 years before pursuing her further math degree and becoming a professor of problem solving. She shared how math and music are their own languages that connect the globe- you can go anywhere and play music with other nationalities and math problems can be broken down and worked on together no matter the language spoken. I love this. My girls tonight shared that Jerrie Mock is their role model. We wouldn't know Jerrie Mock or have read her travel book (her travel log while she circumnavigated the world in her Cessna plane making her the first woman to fly around the world!) Clare wants to be a doctor, not a pilot, but she admires Jerrie's courage and travel! I loved hearing about dear friend's role model is a woman I admire greatly and know the positive impact she is having all many children in our community.
Life on Newark-Granville road had an inspiring, thought provoking and positive reinforcing night! Spending the evening with Clare, Charlotte and Sally and a room full of women 11-70?? dreaming big was good for the soul. I hope you'll ask me more about it and join me as we find more ways to lift these future female leaders and help them reach their dreams. In the mean time answer the same question we did tonight- what would you do if you knew you wouldn't fail?
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