Brilliant Minds, Quiet Voices

"They won't listen to me."

Today I traveled to the YWCA in Warren, Ohio with Kenya Gray, our inaugural Workforce Development Intern at DriveOhio, for an interactive workshop with a brilliant group of middle school girls from the Mahoning Valley region. The students were wrapping up a big week of activities at the Summer Manufacturing Institute facilitated by the wonderful team at the OH WOW! Children's Center for Science & Technology in Youngstown.

We started with a lively discussion about the future of smart mobility. The students patiently listened to my vintage pop culture references, including The Jetsons and Back To The Future. They were highly engaged in back-and-forth discussions about connected vehicles — "How does OnStar really work?" — autonomous vehicles — "What does adaptive cruise do?" — and unmanned aircraft — "What would you deliver with a drone?"

As usual, I was very impressed — but not at all surprised — with the sharp insights, creative ideas and strong opinions of a young group of students. At the same time, I started to pick up on some other familiar — but less inspiring — patterns of discussion I've heard when interacting with young women at STEM education events:

"I'm not smart."

When one of the girls said this, I stopped in my tracks and shot back politely with "Yes, you are!" The discussion continued, but my heart sank a little bit after this brief exchange.

Next we shifted our focus to an innovation workshop led by Kenya on the topic of the Transportation Paradox — "No Car, No Job; No Job, No Car" — inspired by the Paradox Prize innovation challenge recently launched by our partners at The Fund For Our Economic Future in Northeast Ohio. After sharing clips from the outstanding documentary Free To Ride, Kenya facilitated a series of group discussions to identify problems and brainstorm solutions for the intractable challenges of spatial mismatch and workforce mobility.

As we shifted towards the conclusion of our conversation, we asked the girls to consider and then share their ideas about what they personally could do tomorrow to start solving these problems in their communities. We heard several great ideas — and then we heard this:

"They won't listen to me."

Almost immediately, we stopped the conversation and pivoted back to that heartbreaking comment. All of the adult facilitators in the room exchanged pained, knowing glances. We each wanted to believe this wasn't true, but we'd read and seen and heard enough in our varied experiences to know that it was.

Rather than moving on, we dug further — much further — into this topic. Each of the adults took turns asking questions, sharing encouragement, and above all listening to the girls, to help understand why they felt this way and to share our suggestions on how to change this sad but familiar narrative.

Spoiler alert — we didn't solve the problem on the spot. But we did have an honest conversation that we hope reinforced this simple idea:

"We are listening."

If you've read this far, this is your chance to help write the next chapter in this familiar story, in the hopes of leading to different, better outcomes.

When I took my turn talking with the girls about this difficult topic, I talked about you — the network of educators, innovators, and advocates around Ohio and across the country who are working together every day to prepare our emerging STEM workforce.

I told them about the reactions I'd received across my network when I talked about the STEM summer camp for middle school girls that I was visiting — words like "awesome", "amazing", and "inspiring", to name a few. I told them that we're all in their corner, rooting them on and ready to help accelerate their careers in whatever direction they want to pursue.

I gave each of them a business card, and I encouraged them to stay in touch. I hope they do.

I'll leave you with a question similar to what we asked each of the girls during the workshop — what can you personally do tomorrow to start solving this problem in your community?

Share your comments, or send a message with your ideas.

We are listening.

______________________________

Rich Granger is Managing Director of Workforce Development at DriveOhio.

Special thanks to Ralf Urbach and Kate Landry at OH WOW! for the opportunity to share an afternoon with this amazing group of future STEM leaders, and to Kenya Gray for enduring 6 hours of driving across Ohio in a single day.

For additional insights and inspirations on the topics of equity, innovation, and "Lost Edisons", check out this outstanding article by Alex Bandar: https://fisher.osu.edu/blogs/leadreadtoday/blog/lost-edisons/