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Interview by Allison Wang
CONNECTIVITY CONTRIBUTORS REACTIONS
As someone who is deeply passionate about the environment, I found comfort in Stephanie’s sustainability initiatives. However, I also learned so much about the empowerment of women and non-binary people in technology and other STEM disciplines. Coding and math are definitely not my strong academic skills. I would always stray away from them because I thought I would never be good enough. Part of that feeling was a legitimate lack of “natural” talent for math and science, but I believe that another aspect of my hesitation to explore STEM derived from a societal expectation that women study and pursue the humanities. True, I have always had a knack for essay-writing and learning languages and I love those things—but I still enjoyed physics and wished I had spent more time improving my mental math. Listening to this interview made me realize this hole in my academic journey that I had never noticed before.
Stephanie spoke so eloquently and passionately about Superposition 4, an all- female/nonbinary hack-a-thon that she led in San Francisco. She emphasized the need to focus more heavily on the gender gap in STEM because, while there are programs that empower women and girls to explore this realm of academia, still an odd and deafening silence about its importance and its impacts lingers like a thick cloud over all of our heads. Stephanie led me to wonder what I can do to be more active about efforts towards empowerment both in my fields of discipline (sustainability, anthropology) and in others.