Katherine Olives
Diversity creates innovation. Darlene Gillard Jones, a founding member at digitalundivided, shared this thought on Monday, April 18th amongst other female leaders at the Zahn Innovation Centers panel event, Decoding the Gender Divide. This quote seems obvious to any changemaker or entrepreneur, but facts show that gender diversity simply doesnt exist in STEM fields where disruptive innovation is essential to progress. Women represent only 24% of STEM fields, and theres significantly more disparity when it comes to minority women.
Thats why the Zahn Innovation Center in partnership with Standard Chartered Bank put together a panel of powerful female entrepreneurs and professionals from organizations like Girls Who Code, digitalundivided, Black Girls Code, ScriptEd, Connect With STEM and In Your Corner. These women leaders Leah Gilliam, Darlene Gillard Jones, Bea Arthur, Calena Jamieson, Tashay Green and Sabriya Stukes shared their own stories, mantras for success, and discussed how they encourage young women to enter the STEM fields.
One of the main reasons women dont enter or stay in STEM fields is because they feel like the other. When there arent female role models already in the field, young girls have trouble seeing themselves there. As Bea Arthur said, You cant be what you cant see. Many of the women on our panel became those role models for the young girls they work with, just like many of the young women in the audience are becoming role models for the next generation. One City College of New York student described that she often feels out of place in her field; as one of a handful of female computer science majors, she was inspired and filled with hope by the panel. Others were enlightened by the overall conversation, believing it was well overdue. Another CCNY student said, We often dont stop to have these real conversations with no filters. Im glad we got to have this conversation with everyone in the room.
For Leah Gilliam of Girls Who Code, having everyone involved in this discussion is key. She stresses the importance of building up allies as you go, and knowing those allies wont always look like you.
At the Zahn Innovation Center, we believe that were fostering a community of changemakers, the next group of global leaders, says Kesia Hudson, Program Manager of Womens Entrepreneurship at the Zahn Innovation Center at CCNY. Hudson knows how important it is to support these changemakers in their entrepreneurial journey, and creates programs to specifically support women entrepreneurs as part of the Standard Chartered Bank Women in Technology Incubator.