Mentorship

It can be daunting to imagine the future if you’re a girl pursuing a career in a field where there are few, if any, other women to look up to as role models and mentors. STEAM fields are no exception.

“I was the only woman in my lab in a lot of different circumstances,” says Emily Adams, regional science coordination lead for NASA SERVIR’s Eastern Southern Africa hub. “It was my job to clean, always. Even something small like that can be really detrimental to a woman’s career: cleaning takes away from my studies, takes away from my research, et cetera. It can build up.”

But recent studies show that having female mentors —and more female peers — can help women avoid those potential pitfalls and keep them on a STEAM career path. According to The Atlantic, one study “showed that female engineering undergraduates who are paired with a female mentor felt more motivated, more self-assured, and less anxious than those who had either no mentor or a male one. They were less likely to drop out of their courses, and keener to look for engineering jobs after they graduated.”

Creating those mentorship opportunities was one of the many goals of the 2018 WiSci Girls STEAM Camp, where professionals like Adams from NASA SERVIR, Google, and Intel taught an intensive STEAM curriculum each day and then offered career advice during nightly Mentor Hours.

Listen to some of the advice mentors provided campers below and find out how that advice inspired WiSci campers:

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Onome Ofoman, Google

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Robert O’Connor, Intel

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Jennifer Francis, Intel

A lot of the opportunities I've had is because I tried. As you try things, you see that you're good at some things and maybe not so good at other things. All that information is useful. It's useful to know what you're good at. It's also useful to know what you're not good at. Trying things is a muscle, so the more you do it the easier it is. So just always try, never limit yourself.

– Onome Ofoman, Google

I believe I was empowered but WiSci gave me much more than I already had. I got more knowledge. I have access to more careers. The mentor hours enable us to see the ups and downs of each career. It was really helpful. I got more empowered.

– Iyambo Elmah, Namibia

There are very few women in STEM fields, which means we have very few people to look up to. There are a lot of male allies in my life, but sometimes you feel most comfortable looking up to somebody like you. I would like to pass that relationship down to the next generation and encourage women to pursue STEM and give them a positive role model to look up to throughout their career.

– Emily Adams, NASA

I learned how to network, how to speak to people, and how to approach them about what I want to do in life. There are people out there who know how things work and know how to get where you want to go.

– Jennifer Giron, United States

Anytime an opportunity comes up, take it up. Because you never know. You never know where it’s going to lead to, you never know who you’ll meet, so just follow your dreams. It can be hard sometimes, but at least you know at the end of life, I gave it my best. I tried.

– Jackie Rajuai, Google

What made it easier to talk to [the mentors] was their excitement and passion. If you asked, they’d be willing to tell you about their job—which, to you, makes it seem really fun because they say things like, ‘Oh, coding is fun! You get to try different things and if it fails you get to do it again.’ At the end of the day, you feel empowered.

– Nokwanda Matse, eSwatini

The most important thing for me is to see women coming together, especially in this field of technology. I’m a woman in computing and I see how we are underrepresented. This is a very big opportunity to make a difference to other women and encourage them to also join the field.

– Ndinelago Nashandi, Namibia University of Science and Technology

They have gone through what you're going through and any advice they can give us on making it easier, persevering through it, is helpful.

– Tolani Smith, United States

WiSci shows you that you do have a support network across the world and you're not the exception to the rule. So as we get more and more women to think of engineering as a potential future for them, hopefully, we get the balance right.

– Robert O’Connor, Intel

Women entering doctoral programs with no female peers are

11.9

percentage points less likely to graduate within six years than their male counterparts.

NBER Working Paper No. 25028

ONLY

4%

of female students interested in pursuing STEM were encouraged to do so by a mentor.

Million Women Mentors

90%

of WiSci campers said that they made a connection with one or more STEAM professionals during mentor hours.

54%

of WiSci campers indicated that they had a female mentor in the STEAM fields before camp started. Following the camp, this figure rose to

77%