We had an inspiring group of women come to speak to our seventh and eighth graders at Broadview Thomson PK-8 School. The girls came to the library at lunch and stayed until the end of the day. They listened to four women share their journey’s from Middle School to their careers. All brought with them a PowerPoint slideshow to visually share with the girls the things they had done, jobs they had, and what they were involved with now.
Annie Bader impressed the group when she showed slides from NASA and said that she had worked there! Many were very impressed with that. Virginia Bing returned for another round after coming to speak at our school last year (she also showed up at our field trip to Microsoft just to help the girls!); she inspired our group, sharing that if you are artistic, creative or like photography there is a place for you in the tech field. You do not have to be good at math or like coding to have jobs in the tech field. Jennifer Owens shared with us some early websites she had created in the 90’s. This was before all the graphics and fancy tabs and scrolling photos. Shannon Eubanks shared her story of growing up and spoke of her job as an engineer. All of the women were great! All of the girls were very inspired to attend the next IGNITE activity which was going on a field trip to Microsoft.
Thank you to all the women for coming and sharing their struggles, joys and accomplishments!
Michele Amato
Broadview Thomson Middle School