Trying to put my money where my mouth is

I volunteered to give one of the IGNITE presentations at Evergreen High School yesterday. IGNITE is a program to inspire and motivate young girls - particularly young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds - to consider careers in high tech. They have a wide variety of women in high tech careers come give brief speeches to the girls to explain their backgrounds, how they got into high tech, what the pros and cons are, and why girls should consider high tech as an option. I gave presentations to two 9th-grade classes, and pointed out that I'm someone who grew up in the projects, youngest of 13, and never thought college was an option for someone like me, yet here I am, making a good living at a very senior level in a competitive field.

I'd have sworn, while I was giving my presentation, that the girls were mostly asleep or bored out of their skulls, so it was really encouraging to read some of their comments on the evaluations:

“Learning that though we are young women we can get good jobs in the workforce”
“I liked learning about how computers are everywhere and the different kinds of jobs available in this field”
“I liked to see female tech people”
“It was very encouraging to know that there are very intelligent women out there working in a men dominated work place.
“It was really interesting to know that you could really do anything you wanted to”
“knowing what companies are looking for in an intern”
“They explained how all jobs relate to technology and this is a useful skill”
“I learned that the classes I take and the grades I get affect my future”
“I really liked how it was not one huge lecture. I liked how they told us their personal stories”



Of course, the thing that got the biggest rise out of them is when I noticed that many of them responded when game programming was mentioned, so I asked if they knew what a software tester was. When I described that job, they got all excited and wanted to know how they could get that kind of job. "You mean I could get paid for playing games?!" :-D

This kind of is the same deal for me as buying season tickets for the Seattle Storm WNBA team. If I'm going to call myself a feminist, I have to do something to make a difference to women, whether it's young women needing to see female high tech role models, or female professional athletics. I hate doing this kind of presentation, but I also think it's an important thing to do. I'm scheduled for two more presentations next week at Tyee High School (since they're doing the presentations in this district, it seemed just WRONG somehow not to have the most senior high tech woman in the district there!).