November 27th 2017 
MWM-KY Honorary Chair Expands STEM Challenge to Louisville
With the help of a $25,000 donation from Verizon, the KY Commission on Women, under the leadership of MWM Steering Committee member Dee Harbut, is expanding the Lt. Gov.'s STEM Challenge for Girls.
Challenges posed by MWM-KY Honorary Chair, Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton, will now reach middle school girls in Lexington and Louisville. The program will continue at Leestown and Tates Creek Middle Schools in Lexington, and will be introduced to Olmstead South and Westport Middle in Louisville. 
MWM-KY is thankful for the strong leadership provided by Dee Harbut and Lt. Gov. Hampton, as well as to Verizon for their support of KY students. 

Women Who Code Announce Winners
Women Who Code  (WWCode), the world’s largest nonprofit organization working to support the success of women engineers, is proud to announce the winners of the 2017 #ApplaudHer Awards. This honor was bestowed upon women in 13 categories and was given in recognition of their contributions and accomplishments within the technology industry.
The winners were announced last night at the  Second Annual Women Who Code Awards  2017. Over 100 people were in attendance to celebrate the event and support Women Who Code in their work to inspire women to excel in technology careers. Sponsors for the ceremony included  Github ,  Samsung ,  Hired ,  Plex ,  Capital One ,  VMWare ,  Saint Archer Brewing ,  Hova Labs ,  Peroni , and Galvanize .

The winners of the awards were as follows:

  • Ignite Award: Vicki Cheung, Head of Infrastructure, OpenAI
  • Rise Award: Maria Kazandjieva, Engineering Manager, Netflix
  • Innovator Award: Kimberly Mach, Senior Software Engineer, Microsoft 
  • Visionary Award: Martha Arellano, Cloud Platform Architect, VISUAL VOCAL
  • Open Source Award: Erin Spiceland, Engineer, NodeSource
  • Founder Award: Fatima Dicko, Founder & CEO, jetpack
  • Phoenix Award: Lori Hill, Software Engineer, NBC
  • Localization Award: Mimi Hills, Director, Product Globalization, VMware 
  • Senior Leadership Award:Ann Yeung, Sr. Director, Software Engineering, Capital One
  • VPE Award: Dory Weiss, VP of Engineering, nCino 
  • Director of Engineering Award: Selena Deckelmann, Director of Engineering, Firefox Runtime, Mozilla 
  • Engineering Lead Award: Laurence Girard, Engineering Lead API and DevOps, GIPHY
  • Thought leadership Award: Max Whitney, VP of Engineering, Max Amalgamated


Mentors Needed!
Our valued MWM partner, Mentored Pathways, is looking for additional mentors to help serve a number of students across the United States. Utilizing a vast network of middle and high school educators, Mentored Pathways provides the opportunity for mentors to match with students focused on specific projects to help boost their understanding and desire for the STEM path. You may find more information by going to their website - MentoredPathways.org
PAKISTAN: Second WOW Karachi Festival to be Held on December 2
The British Council in Pakistan, Southbank Centre and TAF Foundation (TAFF), along with six local curatingpartners, are organising the second Women of the World (WOW) festival in Karachi. The event will start from December 2 and will run till December 3 at the Alliance Francaise.During the #WOWKhi 2017 programme review, young girls from Pak Shaheen Boxing Club shared their inspiring journey and showcased their boxing skills. They will also be part of the two-day #WOWKhi festival.

INDIA: Road to Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 Celebrates Women Entrepreneurship
 The Bhubaneswar Road to Entrepreneurship Summit was inaugurated by Prafulla Samal, Minister, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Women an d Child Development, Government of Odisha.
Making his inaugural address he stated, "The Government of Odisha is ready to provide proactive support to startups in the state. We are keen to support the women entrepreneurs in the state in every possible way. The state government is trying to bring all women, irrespective of their socio-economic class, caste, creed and religion, in Odisha, into the fold of Self Help Group (SHG) mechanism by 2018. We have even signed an MoU with Facebook to assist our women in digital marketing of their quality products not only in state but also worldwide."

AUSTRALIA: Empowering The Next Generation of Women in STEM
Bringing coding to high schools across Sydney, Coder Academy is working to get girls interested (or at the very least, aware of) the opportunities that are available in STEM fields - before they begin to think about their university and career choices.
The program, dubbed "Code Next", is so important that Vodafone has thrown its weight behind it. This initiative, and others like it, are making a real change.
"The jobs of the future are changing," Vodafone's Director of HR, Vanessa Hicks told Gizmodo Australia, "and that means skills such as coding are becoming increasingly valuable for students to compete in the workforce."

CANADA: Woman Wins Inaugural Award Recognizing Women in Agriculture
From working on the family farm in Earl Grey to mentoring youth across the country, Belinda Wagner has seen all sides of agriculture — and now she has been recognized for her exceptional contributions to the industry.
Wagner is the recipient of the first ever Celebrating Women in Agriculture Award presented by the Canadian Western Agribition and BMO. 
“It’s not something I feel I need to have this public recognition for because it’s just what I am and what I do,” said Wagner at Agribition on Thursday. “But it’s wonderful to have the congratulations from industry peers.”
Wagner has worked in the industry in various administration roles for 30 years. Twenty of those years have included work with youth mentorship programs at provincial and national levels through the Saskatchewan and Canadian Angus Associations. 

UKRANE: Ukrainian Women in Search of Role Models
Some of the more than 50 young women sitting quietly at roundtables appear to be trying to avoid the gaze of Ukrainian well-known female politicians, television anchors, businesswomen and scientists sitting next to them.
However, excitement still sparkles in their eyes: soon each of them will get to choose a mentor from among these successful women.
The mentoring program is part of the I Can Do It initiative, which was launched by the Elena Pinchuk AntiAIDs Foundation, in partnership with Coca-Cola Ukraine, on Nov. 8 at Taras Shevchenko National Museum in Kyiv.

Contestant Promotes STEM at Pageant
One of the winners on Saturday included Alexandria Warneke, 17, of York, who was crowned Miss Harvest Moon Festival, and Emily Curtis, 23, who was crowned Miss Panhandle. Warneke was voted the Audience Choice Winner, and will encourage STEM education during her reign. Curits won the Overall Talent Award and tied for the Overall Interview Award and said she hopes to encourage more women to pursue careers in the STEM field by creating a network of support.

App Creators Emma Yang & Jaden Smith Empower Youth with ‘The STEM10’ Series
Science, technology, engineering and mathematics may not get the same kind of love from young people that sports, entertainment and social media receive, but if Emma Yang has anything to do with it, the tide will surely turn.
And with good reason. Yang is among 10 young innovators who are part of “The STEM10,” a new online docuseries aimed at highlighting and encouraging diversity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (S.T.E.M.). As the creator of Timeless, an app that helps Alzheimer’s patients use facial-recognition software to identify people in real time, Yang has blazed a noticeable trail in science and technology while motivating her peers to carve their own path to success.
To hear the 13-year-old trailblazer tell it, “The STEM10“ “has the potential to show many students that they can empower themselves with STEM to make an impact in their communities.”

Camas Student Wins Oregon Science Contest
It was the unknown that got Monica Chang her internship.
The Camas High School junior was asked to work at a booth during a Girls in STEM event for middle school students, where she was teamed up with Barbara Sorg, a professor of neuroscience at Washington State University Vancouver. After spending some time with her, Sorg offered Chang an internship in her lab.
“It was her curiosity, asking question after question about my work,” Sorg wrote in an email. “In addition, I was so impressed when she said how fun it would be to conduct experiments in which one didn’t already know the answer, as in standard class laboratory experiments. She knew, at age 14, that doing ‘real science’ meant not knowing the answers ahead of time. I don’t remember what I was thinking at age 14, but it certainly wasn’t anything as sophisticated as that.”

USU, Tech Council Encouraging more Women to Graduate with STEM Degrees
When Joanna Boyd arrived at Utah State University several years ago, she thought she wanted to major in statistics because she enjoyed it so much in high school.
But her thoughts about that subject later changed.
“I felt like I got stuck with statistics (because) I’d do the data crunching and that was it — I had to provide those results to someone else,” Boyd said. “Whereas engineering, I get to take those results and actually do something about it.”
So Boyd switched her major to mechanical engineering. Set to graduate next year, she has her mind set on a job in the field at a time when women make up less than a quarter of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs in Utah.

Carolyn Chang of Westampton Named President of Black Women Lawyers’ Association
It was mentoring that helped get Carolyn V. Chang where she is, and now she is thrilled to be helming an organization that mentors black female attorneys.
Chang, 58, of Westampton, was formally sworn in as president of the Association of Black Women Lawyers of New Jersey at a ceremony in September at the Underground Railroad Museum at Smithville Park in Eastampton. She has been a member of the organization for 25 years, and it she provides a valuable service to anyone interested or starting out in the legal profession.
“This organization has a core group of women who work really hard to ensure the success of young lawyers,” Chang said. “It’s a tremendous honor to head up this organization. It’s the culmination of 25 years of involvement. It’s a tremendous amount of work, but it’s a labor of love.”

Help Support the IEWBC During Give Big San Bernardino
The  Inland Empire Women’s Business Center is pleased to announce their participation in the 2017 Give BIG San Bernardino County online giving event.
Our goal is to receive 1,000 donations and $10,000, which would exceed the number of donations and funds we have received in previous years.When you donate funds for the IEWBC, your generosity will help benefit local entrepreneurs and business owners by providing services such as:
  • Business training
  • Business counseling
  • Programs and special events
Women in IT—From the Classroom to the Boardroom
It’s no secret that computer and information technology jobs are the future of our digital economy. It’s one of the fastest-growing occupation categories in the United States and is projected to grow 13 percent by 2026. Yet, recent U.S. data shows there are more than 500,000 open computing jobs and fewer than 40,000 new computer science graduates to fill them. What’s more, only 7,000 of those grads are women.
If our future economy is centered on computing and IT, how are we going to get more women interested in this field? How will we arm them with marketable skills so they can thrive in the digital economy? And, how can we get girls from the STEM classroom to the boardroom? 

Teagasc is Sowing the Seeds for More Women in STEM
A new publication from Teagasc highlights the diversity and backgrounds of women who work in research. Dr Claire O’Connell spoke to Jane Kavanagh.
When Jane Kavanagh from  Teagasc  was at a meeting in Brussels, a booklet called   Queen’s Gambit: The Launch of a Research Career caught her eye. Published by the National Contact Centre for Women in Science, of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, it was a profile of several female early-stage researchers.  
She brought a copy home and it immediately captured the interest of her young daughter, who was intrigued by the stories of the featured researchers. That sowed the seed of an idea in Kavanagh’s mind, and ultimately led to the launch this month of a new publication:  Teagasc Women in STEM .

AAAS Champions Women in Science at International Events
Speakers at two international conferences supported by AAAS stressed the importance of increased female representation and leadership in scientific fields to take maximum advantage of available talent and optimize solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing the planet, such as climate change, food security, and poverty.
If more women are not included in STEM leadership, “We lose talent, we lose perspective, and we invent solutions for a few when we should be inventing solutions for all,” said Julia MacKenzie, AAAS director of international relations, at the World Science Forum (WSF), held 7–10 November in Jordan.

GES 2017: Be it Kabul or Kashmir, Women are Refusing to be Boxed into Pigeonholes
Women entrepreneurs, across geographies and cultures, face similar challenges – however, it is their will to succeed and rebel streak that continues to fuel their passion...
Hyderabad "the entrepreneurship capital of India," is all set to receive Ivanka Trump and hundreds of "emerging entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders from around the world," for the eighth edition of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 (GES 2017), this month.
"The eminent annual gathering" is expected to set the social media on fire with selfies and #hastags such as #GES2017 #IvankaTrump #WomenFirst as entrepreneurs & startup enablers mingle, network, learn and educate each other during the three-day event.


In a recent Gallup study, only 11 percent of corporate executives perceived that college graduates had the skills they were looking for. How can we better prepare the next generation for the jobs of tomorrow? 
In her new book, Teach to Work: How a Mentor, a Mentee and a Project Can Close the Skills Gap in America (Taylor and Francis: March 28, 2017) mentoring expert Patty empowers professionals – whether they are bankers, lawyers, architects, accountants, engineers, IT specialists or artists – to bring their real-world experience and her project based mentoring model into the classroom. 
Compelling and insightful, the book reveals how professionals can embark on a journey to transform lives, mentoring one student at a time. 
“You have made a difference in the lives of these kids, and most likely you have made a difference in the lives of their kids as well. They have grabbed hold of your light, because they feel your encouragement and kindness, and maybe because they had no other. Thank you for your important leadership in this role.” 
— Chris Gardener, Author of The Pursuit of Happyness, 2010 NFTE Dare to Dream speech 
For more information visit  www.teachtowork.com
 
Women’s Quick Facts brings to life insightful data on the impact of women that everyone should know. From purchasing power, to how efficient women owned companies are with respect to capital compared to men, this book takes the pulse on women in today’s modern economy. Not only does each page compile a broad spectrum of the most current data, it also brings the numbers to life in bite size, easy to read content.

Million Women Mentors | STEMconnector | 202-304-1964 | MWM@STEMconnector.org | www.MillionWomenMentors.org