STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) has become such an important part of our world. With science, technology and engineering becoming some of the fastest growing and highest paid jobs, it is amazing that only 28% of the workforce is made up of women. Park Place Technologies has teamed up with iWish to empower girls with knowledge, confidence and the tools to develop their skills in the STEM arena. They believe when given the right tools early on they will develop their own STEM identity and bring it with them through higher education and into a career of the future. Watch as Harry meets with Jennifer Deutsch about the future of STEM and what they are doing today to encourage its growth.
Video Transcription
Harry Brelsford
Hey nation nation, Harry here with Jennifer Deutsch of Park Place. How you doing, Jennifer?
Jennifer Deutsch
I’m doing great. How are you?
Harry Brelsford
Good, good. I’ll tell you what a timely topic with this headed into the holiday season people’s hearts are warm and joyful. And you’re here to talk about good news stem? And how workplace supports that. What’s the story?
Jennifer Deutsch
So the story is, is that stem in an initiative in STEM is mutually beneficial. helping young girls to understand opportunities in STEM is critical, not only for the population, but also critical for organizations that need people to help out in specific fields. But the opportunities are huge and more and more coming to the market every single day, from marketing operations to integrating technology analysts. No STEM careers are in every possible field. And there’s unlimited opportunity for women in STEM fields. And if young girls don’t understand and don’t start the process early, they get they get closed out. And you know, I think that an investment in STEM today opens a stronger pool of employees for Park Place, technologies in the future. And so we think we can drive innovation, we want to make a difference, and we want to lead and we think we can affect change. And quite frankly, it’s mutually beneficial. We’re helping young business.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah. Yeah, mutually beneficial. Well, what’s what’s one of your use cases, I think you’re aligned with an organization, right?
Jennifer Deutsch
So we’re aligned with several organizations, probably the organization that we’ve gone the deepest with is called iWish, and iWish is actually the largest stem organization in the world. And it’s based in Ireland, and they reach 1000s of girls every year, in early February with programming. And so recently, we launched a program called Tech for Good. And we donate recycled laptops to young female students in need in Ireland who have limited or no access to technology, we actually work with school principals to find out which girls in the schools don’t have access to a laptop at home, and the the principal’s make recommendations, and we actually send the laptops directly to the girls at their homes. So no, we’re calling it leave no girl behind Tech for Good. And at this point, across the world, we’ve literally donated hundreds of laptops. And we’re continuing, and we hope to donate 100s, more specifically this year in Ireland.
Harry Brelsford
And what’s what’s the basis of this? Is this coming down from the CEO is a passion project. How did this come to be?
Jennifer Deutsch
You know? That’s, that’s a great question. So our CEO, Chris Adams, President and CEO of Park Place Technologies, is interested in STEM, but he’s interested in STEM for all the right reasons. And so he brought it up and we had to we had two executives who actually jumped at the opportunity to help with this. I’m one of them. And Nicola Buckley, who is our EVP of support also jumped on it. But clearly, it’s a it’s a passion project for Chris Adams.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, yeah. Because that’s what we often see is, you know, organizations, especially in this era of diversity, equity and inclusion. A they’re doing the right thing, but be there’s often a some passion project element to it, right, that they they kind of favor one direction over the other. What’s next and 2022 with the stem initiatives and II any campaigns going on?
Jennifer Deutsch
Yeah, so we’re, we’re involved with I wish and two other aspects. One is helping to push out their huge event on February 10 2022. And so we push out an invitation to all of our customers and all of our channel partners, who then push it out. So we’ve got a lot of girls who around the globe, who will be watching about a two hour to three hour presentation on opportunities in STEM last year, it reached a global audience of 18,000 girls in 16 countries. The other thing we’re doing this year is actually creating a twinning Program for Schools in Ireland in the United States. So we’re going to pair up schools in Ireland, with schools in the United States where young girls can have shoes learning experiences, shared STEM learning experiences, and also have the ability to continue the relationship. So we’ve got schools in Ireland teamed up and paired up with schools in Boston, Cleveland, San Francisco and Santa Barbara. We also have a very nice relationship with Girl Scouts in the United States. Well, because, yeah, we have Girl Scout troops come in, they can actually win or earn a security badge from us. They actually work on rebuilding hardware, they’re exposed to an awful lot of products and services that we offer. They tour the facility, they have a hands on learning experience. We also have a partnership with WPI, based in Massachusetts, for the same type of programming. And then we also have a very significant program with CoderDojo and the coding club. In Ireland in England.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, Coder Dojo didn’t they have off topic, but I thought early December we’re coming up on that time of year is you and I speak, they have the day of code or something they used to have a singular day. And you may not know I just typed I haven’t thought of it in years. So this like the day of code, you know, million light bulbs go on.
Jennifer Deutsch
And what’s really interesting is that we, we have in our program, with I wish where we actually have two girls every year when earn a spot to come to Cleveland to actually participate in an externship slash internship. And both girls that we’ve had two years ago, got their first experience with CoderDojo with coding and becoming interested in technology. So it’s a great it’s a great program exposing kids very early on to to coding to stem and all the opportunities so it’s been a wonderful partnership. We have employees who go after after school to work with kids to help teach them to code etc.
Harry Brelsford
Why am I head spinning? I’ll I’m gonna check back with you next quarter but thanks for doing the good work over Park Place with we all appreciate it.
Jennifer Deutsch
Oh, it’s our it’s our pleasure.
Harry Brelsford
All right.
