Women in Tech: How We Can Make Our Society #BuiltByGirls
Often times, Silicon Valley represents a new progressive future. A new hope for progress, development and equality. However, ironically, the tech industry represents one of the last true mainstays of a boys club within our business in the United States. Women seeking to climb the corporate ladder struggle to find mentors or even a peer network along the way. As tech companies try to embrace inclusivity, many struggle with what to do with this puzzling landscape. Today we sit down with people who are trying to be part of the change. Our guests today were some of the greatest winners of the Built By Girls Contest, sponsored by Fortune Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the First Lady Michelle Obama, just to name a few. They sit down and talk about how as young women, they approach the silt of the technology gender gap and how we can better address it in the future, as well as telling us about their incredible projects.
*Note: The content and material in the interview has been edited for clarity.
Special thanks to Lillian, Kathy, Erin, and Aruna for joining us, and a big thanks to Quinn Stewart for transcribing this interview.
RP: The day is September 28th, 2016. I’m here today talking with Lillian Yuan, Kathy Kong, Erin Smith, and Aruna Prasad about their involvement with Built By Girls, which is one of the initiatives for women in tech in New York City, which has been headlining things in pop culture today. It has been featured in Forbes Magazine, Fortune Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, and even the First Lady Michelle Obama has been focusing on this. So first of all, thank you so much for being with me, and I want to start off by asking, what started your involvement with each other, and with the program in general?
Lillian: I got involved in the program after I met Kathy. Kathy had been involved in a program called Girl Up, which is sponsored by the U.N. Foundation and over the summer she went to a leadership summit in Washington D.C. and Built By Girls had a station there and a workshop. She got really interested in Built By Girls and technology because she wants to do computer science in college and she thought that this competition would be a really good avenue for her to dig deeper into that topic while also doing something that empowers women and helps improve education, which was how she first heard of this program. After we met at Notre Dame [Leadership Seminars, a summer 2016 program], we became really close friends there. She talked to me about the program, specifically about the Let Girls Build competition, which is the one that we entered in later, and from that point forward we basically decided that we were both interested in. Me, more so for the fact that I love more philanthropic projects and also helping improve education, so I thought that part of it was really cool. Kathy more so for the tech part of it, and together we brought different skills to the table. We brainstormed different ideas on how we could make our project feasible, and that’s why we’re here today.
RP: So just for the benefit of everyone, you guys submitted a project. You guys happened to win your track of the Built By Girls competition, right?
Lillian: Yes.
RP: Alright. Can you tell me a little bit more about your project?
Lillian: Yeah! So our project is called TARA, and it utilizes a SMS messaging system to help educate migrant girls in Cambodia. Basically our project has two prongs, and the first is a forum that we want to implement in Cambodia, specifically in universities, local community centers, and with community leaders who are already helping to educate girls in the area. This forum would have a lot of different topics included, like lifestyle and health, virtual schooling subjects, such as the core areas of subjects that we have in schools today like math and science, and also career advice. These community leaders would be able to post in the forum and on the TARA business end of it, we would be able to extract information from these forums to send two texts a day, bulk SMS texts to migrant girls who don’t have access to other education and don’t have access to smartphones or other means of technology. Through these texts we would be able to educate them on a variety of subjects that will help them improve, not only their education and their lives once they migrate to urban cities in Cambodia.
RP: That’s incredible. Aruna how did you get involved in it? I believe you had a project yourself as well, correct?
Aruna: Yes. So actually we have a friend that we know who writes tech articles, books, and so on, so she sends me emails about interesting tech events and things like that. So she told me about this challenge and she knew about my previous work and said that maybe I’d be interested entering, and I did, so that’s how I found out about the challenge and ended up as a finalist. My project is called Nerdina, which essentially is a collaborative forum for developing girls as leaders in STEM fields through the distribution of hands on educational content. My project itself mainly consisted of a Nerdina kit with all of the tools girls would need to build simple circuits and gadgets. So for the kits there were three different levels, from beginner to advanced, and then accompanying booklets or YouTube videos for tutorials. The net goal is for these girls to become leaders in the future for technology.
RP: Wow. Are they specifically geared for girls at all, or what makes a “kit” for girls?
Aruna: A big part of my project was creating a community, so for that part of how I got started on this idea of being for girls was in developing countries and as a part of the Let Girls Build track was that I run Nerdina at my own school and a couple of nearby schools are also starting clubs and we also run meetups and events for all of the girls in the clubs. So a big part for me in terms of focusing Nerdina on girls is by creating a community and a support system for girls to discuss their ideas and show their projects.
RP: So do you focus more on your own local community or are you trying to expand that more towards the third world?
Aruna: Yeah, so the idea started out because I’m doing it in my local community now, but I definitely think that it could be applicable anywhere around the world and I’m hoping that now that I’ve been in the Let Girls Build challenge that I’ll be able to make that a reality.
RP: I guess the same sort of thing goes to Erin. Can you tell me about your project that got you there?
Erin: Yeah, so they entered the Let Girls Build section of the competition, and I entered the Future Founders section of the competition. So I have been working on my research project for about a year now. So I was looking for opportunities to expand and build off of what I’ve already done. I’m part of this organization called the National Center for Women in Technology, and so I had won an award with them in the past, and I’m part of this big Facebook group and they posted about the competition, and that was my introduction to it and then I applied and went from there.
RP: That’s great. Tell me about your project.
Erin: Yeah, my product is called FacePrint. FacePrint is a telemedicine early and accurate Parkinson’s Disease detection system, based off a series of biomarkers I’ve discovered in facial muscle contractions. So basically by using facial recognition software and algorithms and by having subjects watch Super Bowl commercials and taking a selfie in a certain emoji, I’m able to use biomarkers, and I’m working on developing an algorithm for a diagnosis based off of these biomarkers.
RP: So just to clarify, you’re combining emojis and selfies, something considered with very young people to Parkinson’s, you’re applying it to a disease that’s normally associated with age?
Erin: Yeah, so those are just the stimuli that I’m using to elicit the facial responses to determine a Parkinson’s diagnosis, yeah.
RP: Okay, awesome. So that’s how you guys all got into this in the first place, and you all won awards for your projects, but that wasn’t where you guys stopped, right? You all came together after that, could you tell me more about that?
Lillian: Yeah, so after the initial pitch day, which was Friday, that was when we presented all of our individual projects, and when that part of the competition wrapped up, we went down to Techcrunch Disrupt, which is this really big, well-known hack-a-thon. That was a 24 hour hack-a-thon, from Saturday to Sunday. What we did was during those 24 hours, we looked at a lot of different companies that were sponsoring the hack-a-thon, and they had a lot of different booths set up in this huge warehouse which was where the hack-a-thon was. Different prizes were awarded to those who could best incorporate APIs into their projects really well, and so for the first couple of hours of the competition we were looking for them at these booths and immersing ourselves with the technology because we’re all really new to that kind of environment, even though we’ve been involved with tech before.
After that, we came across a booth ran by Nothing But Net, which helps fight malaria and funds malaria research. And so they were kind of there to encourage people to create projects that would help fight Malaria in some way. So that really got us thinking into how we could use technology for good, like we’ve all been doing in our projects before, through Built By Girls. What we came up with was an app called Mapsquito, which is a game that raises awareness for malaria.
How it works is we had a map and there are different locations that correspond to areas in the world that have a lot of malaria, and have high rates of malaria deaths. So each of these locations correspond to a different level in the game, and once you click on a certain level you enter into that game, and you see some statistics about malaria and how it affects that country or city, specifically. Once you go into the level, you are basically this little person and there are things falling from the sky, good things and bad things.
So for example, one of the good things is a malaria net, which you want to catch, and one of the things you want to avoid is a water droplet, because mosquitos thrive in a lot of areas with a lot of water. So through these different icons, we’re educating people on what are the good ways to combat malaria and how you can avoid it. You start off with a certain percent chance of death, which corresponds to real data on the chance of death of malaria in that specific country. As you catch these good items, your percent chance of death decreases, but if you get the bad ones then they go up. You go through the levels and they get harder and harder as you go along, and that’s basically how it works.
Erin: So Lillian talked a lot about raising awareness with the app, but with that, with every level it corresponds with real time statistics about dying from Malaria in that area, and what we do with each level is that the user saves a certain number of lives, and then that corresponds with a certain amount of funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or they could even have the chance to donate themselves. With that game, they have the chance to have that translate to real lives with different donations and different nets.
RP: I want to transition over; how do you get more people involved in programs like this?
Aruna: I feel that honestly, a lot of girls feel that tech isn’t really for them, and that’s because if you try and find role models for technology you mostly come across CEO’s who are males, so I think in general programs like Built By Girls are encouraging girls to become leaders and even though this is a long term solution one way to encourage more girls to enter technology is by showing them that they can be leaders in their field and can make an impact and that’s what programs like Built By Girls are doing. In terms about raising awareness for technology itself, I’m hoping that as more girls join, the program itself will be more well-known and it’ll be clear that coding isn’t something you necessarily do alone and also that computer science isn’t just about coding and really it’s applicable to any field.
RP: Yeah, that’s great. Following that, would you say that the mentorships that Built By Girls tries to present, is that one of the strongest parts of the program?
Aruna: Definitely, I think that the mentorships are immensely useful, because I think that for everybody, when they find something they’re interested in, they’re not really sure how to pursue that interest or what to do when they don’t have any guidance. With Built By Girls giving a mentorship and giving us a direction it’s really valuable for us as girls who have aspirations in technology and also for everyone in the future.
Lillian: Just to go off of that, not only just mentorships but just opportunities in general. Even though I haven’t been involved with Built By Girls for that long outside of this competition, I know they do a lot of different programs for girls, mostly in New York where they mass email girls who sign up for the newsletter and provide them with opportunities to visit large tech companies and see how the work, like Buzzfeed or something like that, and they take these field trips. I think that’s really cool because you don’t have to be the most active person in the program, and you don’t have to be the most knowledgable girl in tech, you just have to be interested and they will reach out to you and you have these amazing opportunities to learn so much and it’s very easy for the girls who are involved with the program to realize all those opportunities to help girls get involved and also help themselves grow in the tech field.
RP: That’s great.
Aruna: Just to add on to the monthly events, the whole basis is using tech in other fields, so they’ve had tech in music, for examples, and it shows that you can incorporate computer science and technology into any field.
Erin: Yeah, I think that by showing the application side of it is really important because it’s something that a lot of girls don’t necessarily see because they’re not even aware of it.
RP: So stop me if I’m wrong on this, but the impression was that you guys did this after you did so well at Built By Girls and after you guys won the hack-a-thon, you guys got to set up a booth at a tech presentation, correct?
Lillian: Yeah, so after the Techcrunch hack-a-thon, there was a Techcrunch conference, which features a ton of different startups from all around the world, as well as a lot of iconic figures in the tech world who speak there, like the guy who created Messenger, Pokemon GO, different people like that. So it’s this whole three day tech conference event where all the big players and all the little players get together and try and feed off that energy.
RP: Once you guys were out there, did you notice anything different, like how people perceived you being women?
Kathy: So one instance, and it wasn’t about how they perceived us but it was really funny, because at the conference there were two bathrooms, and the line for the men’s bathroom would be so long, but the girls line would always be right in, right out. So that was just an interesting observation that we all made.
Lillian: It was cool because I never felt like people were looking down on us because we were young girls there but a ton of people came up to us and said, “This is so exciting, we want to be able to help you as much as we can because this is something not new, but you don’t see this very often.” I think it’s really encouraging to see that a lot of people want more of this [Women in technology], and they wanna help out with this initiative to get more girls involved in technology, and they’re so excited that we were there and that made us really excited to be there too.
RP: That’s great. Do you think it helps to have it come from a young perspective too? Do you think that as younger generations become more and more of the status quo, do you think this [the gender disparity] will get better?
Aruna: I think it definitely will because increasingly there are so many more programs like Built By Girls and a lot of others getting more and more girls interested in technology and I think that when girls in future generations look up and see more women role models using technology in different fields and in a lot of cool ways they’ll also want to learn more about technology and computer science so it’ll be a cycle and more and more girls will be interested.
Erin: Yeah I feel like it’s very perpetual because as more and more girls get involved they influence a handful of girls and then they influence a handful of girls, so I feel like it will definitely continue to grow and increase.
RP: Awesome, so one more question. Recently there’s been talk about policy initiatives you could take in order to make the gender disparity fall a lot quicker in technology. One mention that has been brought up is having an adaptation of the Rooney Rule; it’s a rule that for every position you wanted to fill you had to interview at least one person who wasn’t a white male, and that helped to bring in a lot of diversity into that section. Would you guys be in favor of a policy proposal like that? Would you see any flaws with an adaptation of the Rooney Rule?
Erin: I definitely could see a lot of potential, and the long term positive effects of it, even if it’s just bringing a greater number of women with the chance to interview, but I still feel that there will still be bias, an unconscious bias that exists, at least in the beginning, but I think it’s an interesting idea.
Lillian: I think that would be a really awesome next step to take, but I think one huge barrier that I see in my life right now is something you can’t fix with policy, and that’s that a lot of girls intrinsically gravitate towards fields of the humanities and that’s because we are in a society where those are the fields permeated by girls and so they feel like the tech world is so foreign. For me it was something that was really scary and I didn’t really know how to approach it so I kind of moved my interests away from that on a subconscious level, so I think a huge thing we have to do is to remove that stigma first, like of people looking down on girls in tech but girls looking down on themselves and girls feeling like this is not where I’m supposed to be, whether that’s through a lack of interest or through societal pressure or through unconscious things like that. So I think in that scenario we have to focus on more first before we get into policy.
Aruna: I think going back to the question about interviewing I would say that my ultimate hope is that both women and men are interviewed but that the decision on who is hired for a job or a position is made not based on gender but your ability, and your intellect, and whenever we can reach that point where we’re not looking at external factors as much I think would be what we should strive for.
Erin: I think it’s a good starting point though, like you can’t attack the problem from all aspects so you work on it more intrinsically for girls like what Lillian was talking about, and maybe initially we have to have that policy but it should be more an intellectual or skill thing.
Aruna: Yeah I definitely agree that the policy would be helpful but towards the means of an ultimate goal where it’s based on intellect and ability.
Erin: Yeah and that way we don’t become dependent on it.
Lillian: We don’t want to accentuate the differences on it, that’s what I’m worried about with policies such as this. They’re kind of separating them by trying not to. That’s why we don’t need direct legislation but things we can change as people and our mindsets.
Erin: Like the more internal solutions?
Lillian: Yes.
RP: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So that’s the last thing I have for all of my questions, but is there anything that you guys want to add? Just a free microphone to the audience.
Lillian: One thing that I wanna say is that for me this experience has been really cool, and I’ve said this a lot to other girls in the program, and I’m sure they’ve heard me say it, but I realized that tech is for everyone. So there are all of these different fields like tech, English, science, things like that, and they are not discreet. There’s so much overlap between them that I never got the chance to see until I saw them presenting a pitch, like looking at it from a business side, looking at it from a tech side, all of these different things. They all really come together. So for anyone, like my big takeaway from this event was that you can do anything and you can be interested in anything you want, as long as you keep an open mind to it all, and you will see just how much the world has to offer and how many amazing people are doing amazing things in such a diverse field. That would be my voice to anyone who wants to enter the tech field, for girls and guys both, to just keep an open mind and it’s an amazing place and you can do great things.
Aruna: I think going off of that I would say that if you want to do something don’t be afraid to just start it, go with your idea, don’t keep thinking about the things that you could do or that you want to do and then just not start them, because you might think that you don’t know where to start but that’s just because you need to pick one small part of your idea and you never know what it could become. My second thing that I would say would be if you meet people or if you have the opportunity to get into contact with somebody that could really help you who could possibly be a mentor don’t hesitate to contact them or think that they’re not gonna care enough to reach back out to you because you never know until you write that email or you try and make that connection where it could lead.
Erin: I think that going off of what you guys both said, especially about Aruna’s comment about just getting started, because so often there are really brilliant, great girls with great ideas but they just psych themselves out by not feeling like they’re good enough or by thinking, “who am I to have this opinion, I can’t do this”. It just gets to such a point enwrapped in this doubt and this fear that they never start, and so even if they take that one step and open themselves up to the idea, people and opportunities and even more expansion ideas will come flooding ten fold to them. It’s really just about being brave enough to make that first leap forward and making connections and going from there.
RP: Alright, thank you guys so much. Again that’s Lillian Yuan, Kathy Kong, Erin Smith, and Aruna Prasad, with Built By Girls, as the future leaders of the free world. I’m Trent Kannegieter for RealPolitics, and thank you for joining us.
