Behind the scenes: A conversation about inspiring girls in STEM with the creator of Ella the Engineer

I am all in when it comes to encouraging girls to get interested and involved in any of the STEM fields. Over time, I have heard a lot of good ideas - from the Girl Scouts “Think like an Engineer” badge, to iD Tech Summer camps, to female leaders in the schools, to mentoring and sponsorship, to the wonderful Girls Who Code, and I strongly support these and more. 

My own organization, Deloitte, has long worked to create multiple pathways to STEM and STEM adjacent skills development and career opportunities especially for women and underrepresented minority talent from K-12 through college. In fact, we are doubling down on high school-aged students through a series of new initiatives to develop technology-enabled career accelerators particularly towards professional services possibilities in computer science and data analytics.

But I had never considered a comic book (that would be a serious understatement). Until I heard about The Ella Project.

The Ella Project is a comic book series about a young heroine (Ella the Engineer) who uses science and technology to solve issues and, along the way encourages girls to pursue careers in STEM. The great thing about this is that it appeals to girls just beginning to think about these fields, and it also uses real people in the community at-large to help drive the points home. I am honored to be a character in the latest issue (a little surreal TBH) and, in full disclosure, my organization is a corporate sponsor.

I recently sat down with the founder of The Ella Project, Anthony Onesto, and we spoke about the genesis and goals for The Ella Project. This was our conversation (edited slightly for space).

So, I love this idea, I love the characters, and I love the stories. How did this all come about?

Anthony: I was working on an HR project, looking at list of global employees in tech and data science, which was over 1,000 people. When I looked into the demographics of this particular group of employees, I came to find that only 10 of the 1,000, were women. That day, when I got home from work, I asked my girls if they knew what coding was, how their iPhones and tablets worked, etc. They didn’t know a lot, and that’s when I knew I wanted to do something to help change this. I wanted to create something that would ensure girls have a hero with a passion for science, technology, engineering, math, -- and entrepreneurship. Someone with whom they could identify.

Besides an engaging story and likable characters, this has a good message. If we look beyond that, what is your goal here – what do you hope girls take away from this series?

Anthony: We hope Ella The Engineer provides girls with lots of takeaways. We know that telling a truly engaging story resonates with human beings - so with Ella, the hope is that we are able to educate through entertainment. And most importantly, we hope Ella empowers our kids and students and girls. We want them to feel empowered to be themselves. Empowered to be curious, to want to know the why behind things, to be resourceful in finding answers and solutions, and to know that they are capable of great things. They are our future.

I think one of the really innovative things about this series is your use of real people from the world of business. I have to admit, I’m excited and honored to be a character in the series, tell me, why did you choose to involve real people?

Anthony: Kids are always looking for their “real-life superheroes.” Obviously as parents we’re their first role models, and they look to us for guidance, and they look to see who we admire, and why. With The Ella Project, we thought it fitting to integrate real-life superheroes who team up with Ella to problem-solve and help others. We’re able to bring in these amazing, intelligent, female and minority leaders who are shattering the outdated, tech-savvy stereotypes. It makes sense, and there’s an organic synergy to folding-in real people with Ella.

I am asked quite often about our efforts to promote STEM and I talk about mentors and sponsors, and how it truly takes an ecosystem approach to transform, enrich, and elevate the base of diverse talent ready to fuel a high-performing, robust workforce of the future. In your view, how should the business and the corporate world get involved and what more can they (we) do to foster STEM awareness and skills development?

Anthony: Of course, we always appreciate those who help share our story, and how The Ella Project is working to introduce more kids, especially young girls to STEM during their early developmental years. Grassroots efforts are super effective, so tweets, retweets, and other social shares are awesome.

In addition to increasing awareness, we are looking for awesome women with STEM fields and female entrepreneurs to join our STEM Figures project. If you know someone awesome, please let them know about the project and have them reach out. They can shoot us a note at [email protected].

And lastly, we welcome companies that are looking for a unique way to encourage more women in STEM and entrepreneurship to connect with us to discuss how they can sponsor a series of books and graphic novels that profile our list of awesome female STEM and entrepreneurial figures.

I’d like to applaud Anthony and his team for their time and impact. If you have a young woman in your life who might enjoy reading about Ella, you can find her adventures here.