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Is work working for your people and organization? In this podcast, Mercer thought leaders, industry experts and business visionaries share big ideas and best practices to help you build great workplaces and a future where work works for everyone. Making Work 'Work' is a podcast for Mercer Workforce Solutions.

Welcome to Making Work 'Work.' I'm Cynthia Cottrell. Today, we're going to explore a workforce challenge that is near and dear to my heart. And it represents the life's work of my guest today.

The topic, women in STEM. Where are they? And why aren't there more of us? So Australia's STEM-skilled workforce has a disproportionate underrepresentation of women compared to other industries.

Only 15% of Australia's STEM-skilled workforce are women, whereas, the broader Australian workforce has close to 50% female participation. So this is a problem, especially since tech jobs have grown at four times the rate of other jobs since the mid 1980s. Now one in 14 working Australians are in a tech job with more software engineers than plumbers, hairdressers, or baristas, according to a recent report issued by the Tech Council of Australia.

With ChatGPT, hyperdigitalization of everyday home and work processes, low-code, or no-code tools that can work from your phone, it's clear that whether you are directly in a STEM role or not, most of us will need to become STEM oriented in one way or another. So the good news, the number of women enrolling in university STEM courses has increased by 24% between 2015 and 2020 compared with a 9% increase among men. So we are seeing the right trajectory of building the pipeline of females who could go on to take STEM-qualified jobs. But will this be enough to truly change the game?

As a mom of two precocious girls, I am particularly keen to see the acceleration of females taking on STEM roles. I do realize my daughters are fortunate and that they have two parents who have degrees in engineering, so STEM talk is pretty normal in our household. But I know this is not the case for many girls who are often in the minority as it relates to their studies, their interests, or their hobbies in STEM, which is why Mercer is working with Tech Girls Movement Foundation to sponsor key initiatives and programs focused on developing future female STEM leaders.

Techgirls' vision is to see a society in which girls confidently lead in STEM entrepreneurship and contribute to their community and the economy. And today, we are speaking with the founder of the Tech Girls Movement Foundation, Jenine Beekhuyzen. Jenine, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Cynthia. I love the story about your family. And I'm putting your girls on the list of our recruits for next year.

Oh, please do. Yes, absolutely. I'll let them know. So hey, Jenine, tell us a bit more about your background. What attracted you to the field of STEM careers? And what drove you to create the Tech Girls Movement 10 years ago?

Thanks, Cynthia. I think you've touched on it in your intro in that you are an incredible role model for your girls, regardless of if you realize it. And the fact that-- I mean, yes, you may be very fortunate, and your girls are fortunate. But they can see you doing these incredible things, solving problems that are important.

And if you can't see it, you can't be it in my experience. So having those role models, having mentors, having people to show pathways that we may not have seen otherwise are really important. So I love that you touched on that in your intro.

And so fortunately, I've had many role models and mentors who've paved the way for me to be here. And I wouldn't be here without them. And certainly, I have technical skills. I have abilities to hopefully solve problems in our communities and encourage a community of young people to do the same. But certainly, I have a-- building on the back of other people in front of me who have changed the world and shaped the world with technology.

And as you talk about so many interesting technologies in the world today, how can we use them for-- how can we use technology for good? And that's really what Techgirls is about. It's about using technology for good, finding problems in our community we want to solve, encouraging young people to be empowered and be courageous to go and bravely solve problems where maybe others haven't done before them. And we're here to support them. And we have a community of amazing technology people.

That's awesome, Jenine. And I love that saying that you can't be what you can't see. I'm going to reveal my age a little bit.

But when I was going through my engineering degree more than 25 years ago, I was one of only three in my graduating class in my major in systems engineering. And I do remember feeling isolated at times and certainly not amongst a lot of other females that I could confide in and/or discuss how I was feeling as I was going through my studies. But I was able to push on, and I did have a wonderful network of family and friends who supported me.

And I think as you talk about the vision of Techgirls and what it means to provide that kind of support, and encouragement, and confidence-- there's a confidence factor here, isn't there, Jenine? --about what it means to pursue a field where you are often the minority as a female. It'll be great to hear a little bit more about what the types of activities and support are that are offered through Techgirls and how you are finding this impactful.

Thanks, Cynthia. I love that. And I think confidence comes from a number of things. I think it comes from not just being aware of I can use technology to solve problems, but having hands-on digital skills.

And if we think about statistics-- and my background is a researcher, so everything I do is based in research, and numbers, and evidence. And the UN tells us that women and girls are being left behind in terms of digital skills. And they're not engaging in where we need them to be. And they should be part of creating solutions for the future, and they're just not there for many different reasons.

So what Techgirls is really designed to do is firstly to give girls choices in life to say, well, let's get some digital skills, which I believe are very much aligned with English literacy, and math literacy, and digital literacy. And we need these skills as basic human skills that we all need to survive in everyday life. And so let's get those skills.

And then let's build some confidence around them. Let's get some hands-on learning and build some skills so that we can be confident, and hopefully, take it to the next level and be a little bit brave to use them in a place we may not have used them before. But it's about empowering all of us and not just girls, but all of us to use technology in a way that's good for everyone.

Yeah. As we step back a little bit and just think about why this is so important now-- I just talked about what it was like 25 years or so ago. And you've talked a little bit about your early career interest in STEM. And here we are still talking about this today as an urgent need, a critical need for the future of the workforce, particularly, females in STEM.

I was reading a study-- or a result that came out in a report released just a few months ago that stated that if AI was behind a lot of the hiring today, they would actually-- AI would actually hire more women than if humans are sitting at the recruitment end. So you can kind of feel in a statement like that. It sounds great. But at the same time, who is building that technology? And how is that really helping us create a more diverse workforce? What are your thoughts on how this world of AI and who is behind building these very powerful platforms, how that will also shape the future of the workforce in society?

I love that you're exploring that, that exciting new place where we are, Cynthia. And if we can take that in two parts, I think-- firstly, I've been researching the lack of women in technology and broadly STEM for 24 years now. So I was very fortunate I had a couple of role models myself who were academics who were looking at the lack of women in tech back in 1997. So there were certainly pioneers in this space.

So they recognized the s of women walking across the stage graduating in the information technology degrees at Griffith University. And so I fortunately joined their research team and have been studying it ever since. And I guess, that brings us to where we are today.

But funnily enough, not much has changed in almost 25 years in terms of the purpose of why I do what I do and why this is important. So I was studying AI back in 1998 as part of my undergraduate degree, so this stuff isn't new in some ways. And I guess, back then, there were even concerns of, who are we leaving behind? And what does AI have the capability of bringing forward and also-- yeah, marginalizing. And I guess, often in the AI space, marginalized voices are further marginalized.

And I love the study that you quoted. And I did actually look that up before we had this conversation today because much of the narrative before today and pointing out of that story has been that CVs are generally processed by AI by the biggest companies. They're generally programmed by, dare I say, middle-aged white men, but the majority. And therefore, they're using words that men usually wouldn't use in their CVs.

So I have certainly read studies where women are actually left out of that recruitment process because of the AI. So I'd love to explore that further. And I think if that's possible, I love that.

But that's not what we've seen so far. So that certainly has prompted me from a really long time ago to do what I do because I think these technologies have an ability to leave populations out. And I don't think that's useful for us to build useful digital futures for everyone.

I think of something quite tangible every day. In fact, I use my phone for probably more purposes other than talking through it, so probably spending a bit too much time from the screen. But talking about the way technology and platforms are built and not having enough diversity behind that, I think about my phone and the fact that, to this day, I can't hold it in one hand and swipe from left to right because I can't actually reached my finger across the width of the screen.

That might suggest that whomever designed it has much bigger hands than me and likely much bigger hands than most women who are holding that phone. And so you can only imagine what would the world be like if we had more diversity, more diverse thinking in the design of these platforms, again, whether it be your phone, or certainly, these very powerful platforms that are making decisions about hiring, about selecting, about inferring knowledge. So I think the why is pretty much right in front of us every day, isn't it, Jenine?

Absolutely. I love that example. And some of the-- I'm not sure if you know. One of the most interesting example-- and I'm sure people are not really proud of it.

But when we started using our phones to take videos, the videos would always be of a certain orientation. And it would always default to a certain orientation. And that was because it didn't actually allow for people with left hands-- left-handed people, I should say.

Left hands. Left hands. We all have left hands, but sorry, left-handed people. And so I guess, that concept of we just-- there's diversity in so many different parts. It's not around just gender specifically, but so many ways that we can tap into all of our awesomeness.

Yeah, that's a really good point. Coming back against the impact of Techgirls, this is the 10-year anniversary of the foundation. So lots of girls have passed through the program. And as you say, they can start the program as early as age six. Is that right?

Correct. We generally start it at eight. But we've had seven-year-olds say, can we be in the program? And they've built apps to look for animals in their local community and track them, so certainly.

The research tells us that girls opt out as young as six out of STEM. And that's why we're open from that age. But certainly, we run workshops as young as we can to open the possibilities for young people that technology can be used for good.

And so let's talk a little bit about the impact over the years. It'd be wonderful just to hear some stories from you. What a great job have, to be able to get up every morning and young woman by woman be able to shape their thinking about STEM and in careers. It'd be wonderful just to hear a little bit more about the program you run and the impact it's had.

Absolutely. I guess, we started-- so we launched 10 years ago, International Women's Day 2014. And it was really, for me, about turning research into practice. We know what the problem is. We know why we don't have enough women in the technology space and more broadly in the STEM space. What can we practically do to change that?

So I designed a program called Techgirls to essentially address that problem. And it's really around lack of visible female role models and then also, what do people in technology do? So we know what a doctor does. We know what a lawyer does. But what does a technologist do?

And even myself on a day-to-day basis, I'm not sure what most of us do because we make up all of these names for creative things that we do. But certainly, there's a lot of space for finding out what people and what the possibilities are for careers in this space. So we created a campaign called Tech Girls Are Superheroes, which is a series of books that profile women in technology as superhero characters who changed the world.

And so I'd love to throw it out there to you, Cynthia. And you don't have to answer right now. But what is your superpower? And your superpower is not about being awesome at everything. But what is that one thing that makes you different, that makes you amazing, and helps you bring your awesomeness to life?

And I know for myself, it's I'm really good at bringing people together. I have this great ability to bring people together. But I guess, on the funnier side, when I talk to young people, I often say it's about my smile because there's something powerful.

And it's almost physically impossible if you smile at someone for them to frown at you. So if you're in a challenging time, smile at them and see how it goes. But I think it's about, how do you bring your best self to the world?

And for me in STEM and in technology, it was about, how do I engage young people in a place where they don't feel welcome, they don't feel comfortable? So let's bring your superpower. And you might not feel imposter syndrome. You might not feel 100% like you're worthy of being that person or that place. But bring it to that, and give it a try.

And I love when I talk to young people and I say, could you do x technically? And they go, no, no, no, I couldn't do that. And I say, well, if you could do it as a superhero, how would you do it? And they give you 10 ways they could do it.

And it's this amazing thing when we're someone else or we have a piece of jewelry, or a piece of a pair of shoes, or whatever it is to bring our best selves forward. And so that's really what Techgirls is about. It's about engaging young people to find their best selves, to realize that STEM is for them. And we talk a lot about STEM plus X.

So what is your X factor? What do you love about the world? Is it animals? Is it health care? Is it the environment? What is it, and how do you bring STEM to that?

And STEM is in everything that we do. So if we can do STEM plus X and find a way for young people to be engaged-- and that's what we do in our programs. So we've done it through our books in terms of role models and finding ways to have careers. We've done that through our competition of 12 weeks.

Find a problem in your community. Solve it. And we have mentors to help you. And it's really about finding your awesome and knowing that you have something really important to contribute to the world.

Just as you said, I was thinking through how I would answer that question of what my superpower is. And I think my superpower is not too dissimilar to yours. I have this laugh that is pretty discernible, I've been told, in a crowd. But it's energy-giving, I like to say. So I think my superpower is giving energy to others and just doing that through a positive view on life and on ways to approach problems.

And I think one thing that I've really enjoyed about our work with Techgirls and one of the programs you run is the competitions. And what a neat way to bring out the innovation, and the ideas, and the solving of problems through STEM techniques that these young girls pursue as part of the program. I know that when we had a chance to host nearly 100 school-aged girls in our offices here at Mercer where we talked about problem sets from right across the industry, I was absolutely knocked off my feet by the practical, innovative, creative ways that these girls approached the problems that my business thinks about all the time.

And sometimes it is that ability to give confidence to these girls that they have something to say about these things, that they can approach these problems in a way that may be very, very different from the way that we look at them in the corporate sense or even from the adults' perspective. And I think that those competitions that you run are really neat way to apply STEM and to do it in a fun way. I mean, who doesn't like to win an award?

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I agree. I agree. And I think it's almost the cherry on the top in a way. And I think just the concept of competing, I love it.

And I think Australia is particularly-- we like competing. There's a thing about us against others. And there's something about when the girls get in the room together at the end for the showcase, they realize there are a whole bunch of other girls like them.

But otherwise, they're like, yeah, let's give it a go. Let's give it our best shot. And let's try to do the best thing we can possibly do.

So I think the competition is a great motivator. And it's not about giving awards to everyone. But it's about recognizing-- yeah, I mean, awesomeness where it is and the most innovative ideas.

Speaking of the impact this program has had on girls and what they take from it as they move on in their education and beyond, I've got a really fun story I'd like to play for you. And this is actually a story from one of your Techgirls alumni. So let's go ahead and roll tape.

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- I competed in the Techgirls competition when I was in year nine. My app that I created was called Vocabulary Voyages. And it gamified studying for the NAPLAN test.

I had absolutely no knowledge of coding or the technology world before the competition. After I did the competition, I decided to study computer science at university. And probably without the competition, I wouldn't have gone down that path.

Today, I'm a software engineer at Atlassian. I also run a business on the side with my partner. And we create custom websites and technology as well as apps. So I'm still continuing on my app development journey.

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I love hearing Kyra's story. It never gets old. Kyra is one of our many alumni who have shown that, again, if you can't see it, you can't be it.

And I love her story so much that it wasn't a pathway she had ever considered in STEM. It was something that she was-- did it as part of her schoolwork, did an incredible job. Her school certainly supported her in that. And she always wanted to be a doctor. And then she found her way to be a computer scientist.

And I think what didn't come out in the interview was the many awards that Kyra has run-- has won, sorry, as part of her undergraduate and other degrees going forward, and how she's contributed to breast cancer technology and detection, and made incredible advances in that space for how we use technology in a place where it's really important for women particularly. So I love Kyra's story. And I think we can all learn so much from her.

Well, she's working at a pretty top notch company in Atlassian, so I expect that we'll be seeing a lot of Kyra for years to come. But speaking of Kyra and others like her that have gone through your program, what would be your recommendations to organizations who want to try and hire a Kyra or even nurture that spirit of innovation that she exhibited in her time at Techgirls?

That's a great question, Cynthia. And I think it comes back to what you were talking about before about giving young people a voice and recognizing that they can contribute really useful ideas to how we shape our products and our services going forward. And we often just think of young people on their phones all the time. They don't have anything useful to say. And I think that's really shortsighted.

I think, how can we use the technology they have in their hand every day to actually help us to solve real-world problems? And that's what we do at Techgirls. So for us, I guess, number one is let's just do the gender pay gap.

Let's just fix that. That's a pretty easy thing to level the playing field to get women to actively and equally contribute in our STEM industries. I think that's the easy one.

--having an open mind about the opportunities where women can contribute. And we often think, well, women should be in an admin role. Or they're not capable of management roles or whatever stereotype we bring to those lenses.

But certainly, it's about focusing on the women we have. How do we retain them? How do we promote them? And how do we keep them? And how do we provide opportunities for young people to come into our workforce and provide value and views on the way that we do things every day?

And as you say, with your experiences with your Techgirls program with your partners, it's so easy to miss what's right in front of us. And we have these resources. We have these amazing young people. We have these problems. Let's bring them all together and do what we can.

Well, you shared a really practical tip with me last week that I've already started to apply here at Mercer. I don't know if you want to elaborate on it. But it's the concept of inviting the opportunity. And I would love for you to just talk about that because I think there'll be a lot of listeners today who are going to find great use and resource that type of activity in their organization.

OK, so a bit of background was I went to a conference pre-COVID. I was in China. And I happened to meet up with a computer science professor from the US.

And she was talking about her students. And she asked her students, so why are you studying computer science? And so 80% of the males in the room said, I'm studying computer science because I'm good at it.

And then she asked the females in the room, why are you studying computer science? And they said, because I was invited to. And so breaking that down, what does that mean?

So the women who were studying the computer science degree were basically told, you should study this degree because you would be good at it. It's not necessarily something you would innately think that you would want to do or follow that pathway. But you would be good at it. Funnily enough, they were. And so I think there's something really powerful in that.

And anytime I say this, I see all these heads in the audience nodding because I think it's a thing where, how many times women that are listening today, they get invited to do something? That's why they did it, not just because they thought, I will do that because I'm good at it. So it's a barrier we need to get over, but certainly, something-- it's not silly. It's just the way that it is.

But how can we find people in our organization where we should put women forward? Let's give them the opportunity to speak in meetings. Let's invite them to a lunch. Let's find ways to include them in ways we hadn't thought about before.

And I love that you're doing that, Cynthia. I think that's such a powerful thing as a leader to find people that we're, again, leaving behind. And how can we give them a tiny bit of spotlight that they probably don't want, to be honest? But that's the only way we learn and move forward.

It sounds so simple, but there is a psychology behind inviting someone, as opposed to nominating them, as opposed to recommending them. The invitation just to a wedding, or a birthday party, or to a career is your choice. But someone's recognized you. Somebody wants you there. And we're waiting for your response.

So ladies out there, we're waiting for your response. We want to see more of you in STEM. And we can't wait to have you join us. So Jenine, thank you, though, for joining us today. Your experience and insights will surely help many of our listeners today as they work towards making their workforces more diverse, more equitable, and certainly, more inclusive for the next generation.

Thank you. I have goosebumps as you're talking. So thank you so much for the great work you're doing in this space at Mercer and beyond in your family and in your community. And I invite everyone to join the Techgirls community and make a good difference in the world.

Great. Thanks, Jenine. So I'm Cynthia Cottrell. Thanks for listening to Making Work 'Work' from Mercer Workforce Solutions. See you next time.

I hope you enjoyed today's podcast. And thank you for listening. Please subscribe to keep up to date with our latest episodes. And if you have any questions, get in touch with us via our website at mercer.com.au

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Is work working for your people and organization? In this podcast, Mercer thought leaders, industry experts and business visionaries share big ideas and best practices to help you build great workplaces and a future where work works for everyone. Making Work 'Work' is a podcast for Mercer Workforce Solutions.

Welcome to Making Work 'Work.' I'm Cynthia Cottrell. Today, we're going to explore a workforce challenge that is near and dear to my heart. And it represents the life's work of my guest today.

The topic, women in STEM. Where are they? And why aren't there more of us? So Australia's STEM-skilled workforce has a disproportionate underrepresentation of women compared to other industries.

Only 15% of Australia's STEM-skilled workforce are women, whereas, the broader Australian workforce has close to 50% female participation. So this is a problem, especially since tech jobs have grown at four times the rate of other jobs since the mid 1980s. Now one in 14 working Australians are in a tech job with more software engineers than plumbers, hairdressers, or baristas, according to a recent report issued by the Tech Council of Australia.

With ChatGPT, hyperdigitalization of everyday home and work processes, low-code, or no-code tools that can work from your phone, it's clear that whether you are directly in a STEM role or not, most of us will need to become STEM oriented in one way or another. So the good news, the number of women enrolling in university STEM courses has increased by 24% between 2015 and 2020 compared with a 9% increase among men. So we are seeing the right trajectory of building the pipeline of females who could go on to take STEM-qualified jobs. But will this be enough to truly change the game?

As a mom of two precocious girls, I am particularly keen to see the acceleration of females taking on STEM roles. I do realize my daughters are fortunate and that they have two parents who have degrees in engineering, so STEM talk is pretty normal in our household. But I know this is not the case for many girls who are often in the minority as it relates to their studies, their interests, or their hobbies in STEM, which is why Mercer is working with Tech Girls Movement Foundation to sponsor key initiatives and programs focused on developing future female STEM leaders.

Techgirls' vision is to see a society in which girls confidently lead in STEM entrepreneurship and contribute to their community and the economy. And today, we are speaking with the founder of the Tech Girls Movement Foundation, Jenine Beekhuyzen. Jenine, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Cynthia. I love the story about your family. And I'm putting your girls on the list of our recruits for next year.

Oh, please do. Yes, absolutely. I'll let them know. So hey, Jenine, tell us a bit more about your background. What attracted you to the field of STEM careers? And what drove you to create the Tech Girls Movement 10 years ago?

Thanks, Cynthia. I think you've touched on it in your intro in that you are an incredible role model for your girls, regardless of if you realize it. And the fact that-- I mean, yes, you may be very fortunate, and your girls are fortunate. But they can see you doing these incredible things, solving problems that are important.

And if you can't see it, you can't be it in my experience. So having those role models, having mentors, having people to show pathways that we may not have seen otherwise are really important. So I love that you touched on that in your intro.

And so fortunately, I've had many role models and mentors who've paved the way for me to be here. And I wouldn't be here without them. And certainly, I have technical skills. I have abilities to hopefully solve problems in our communities and encourage a community of young people to do the same. But certainly, I have a-- building on the back of other people in front of me who have changed the world and shaped the world with technology.

And as you talk about so many interesting technologies in the world today, how can we use them for-- how can we use technology for good? And that's really what Techgirls is about. It's about using technology for good, finding problems in our community we want to solve, encouraging young people to be empowered and be courageous to go and bravely solve problems where maybe others haven't done before them. And we're here to support them. And we have a community of amazing technology people.

That's awesome, Jenine. And I love that saying that you can't be what you can't see. I'm going to reveal my age a little bit.

But when I was going through my engineering degree more than 25 years ago, I was one of only three in my graduating class in my major in systems engineering. And I do remember feeling isolated at times and certainly not amongst a lot of other females that I could confide in and/or discuss how I was feeling as I was going through my studies. But I was able to push on, and I did have a wonderful network of family and friends who supported me.

And I think as you talk about the vision of Techgirls and what it means to provide that kind of support, and encouragement, and confidence-- there's a confidence factor here, isn't there, Jenine? --about what it means to pursue a field where you are often the minority as a female. It'll be great to hear a little bit more about what the types of activities and support are that are offered through Techgirls and how you are finding this impactful.

Thanks, Cynthia. I love that. And I think confidence comes from a number of things. I think it comes from not just being aware of I can use technology to solve problems, but having hands-on digital skills.

And if we think about statistics-- and my background is a researcher, so everything I do is based in research, and numbers, and evidence. And the UN tells us that women and girls are being left behind in terms of digital skills. And they're not engaging in where we need them to be. And they should be part of creating solutions for the future, and they're just not there for many different reasons.

So what Techgirls is really designed to do is firstly to give girls choices in life to say, well, let's get some digital skills, which I believe are very much aligned with English literacy, and math literacy, and digital literacy. And we need these skills as basic human skills that we all need to survive in everyday life. And so let's get those skills.

And then let's build some confidence around them. Let's get some hands-on learning and build some skills so that we can be confident, and hopefully, take it to the next level and be a little bit brave to use them in a place we may not have used them before. But it's about empowering all of us and not just girls, but all of us to use technology in a way that's good for everyone.

Yeah. As we step back a little bit and just think about why this is so important now-- I just talked about what it was like 25 years or so ago. And you've talked a little bit about your early career interest in STEM. And here we are still talking about this today as an urgent need, a critical need for the future of the workforce, particularly, females in STEM.

I was reading a study-- or a result that came out in a report released just a few months ago that stated that if AI was behind a lot of the hiring today, they would actually-- AI would actually hire more women than if humans are sitting at the recruitment end. So you can kind of feel in a statement like that. It sounds great. But at the same time, who is building that technology? And how is that really helping us create a more diverse workforce? What are your thoughts on how this world of AI and who is behind building these very powerful platforms, how that will also shape the future of the workforce in society?

I love that you're exploring that, that exciting new place where we are, Cynthia. And if we can take that in two parts, I think-- firstly, I've been researching the lack of women in technology and broadly STEM for 24 years now. So I was very fortunate I had a couple of role models myself who were academics who were looking at the lack of women in tech back in 1997. So there were certainly pioneers in this space.

So they recognized the s of women walking across the stage graduating in the information technology degrees at Griffith University. And so I fortunately joined their research team and have been studying it ever since. And I guess, that brings us to where we are today.

But funnily enough, not much has changed in almost 25 years in terms of the purpose of why I do what I do and why this is important. So I was studying AI back in 1998 as part of my undergraduate degree, so this stuff isn't new in some ways. And I guess, back then, there were even concerns of, who are we leaving behind? And what does AI have the capability of bringing forward and also-- yeah, marginalizing. And I guess, often in the AI space, marginalized voices are further marginalized.

And I love the study that you quoted. And I did actually look that up before we had this conversation today because much of the narrative before today and pointing out of that story has been that CVs are generally processed by AI by the biggest companies. They're generally programmed by, dare I say, middle-aged white men, but the majority. And therefore, they're using words that men usually wouldn't use in their CVs.

So I have certainly read studies where women are actually left out of that recruitment process because of the AI. So I'd love to explore that further. And I think if that's possible, I love that.

But that's not what we've seen so far. So that certainly has prompted me from a really long time ago to do what I do because I think these technologies have an ability to leave populations out. And I don't think that's useful for us to build useful digital futures for everyone.

I think of something quite tangible every day. In fact, I use my phone for probably more purposes other than talking through it, so probably spending a bit too much time from the screen. But talking about the way technology and platforms are built and not having enough diversity behind that, I think about my phone and the fact that, to this day, I can't hold it in one hand and swipe from left to right because I can't actually reached my finger across the width of the screen.

That might suggest that whomever designed it has much bigger hands than me and likely much bigger hands than most women who are holding that phone. And so you can only imagine what would the world be like if we had more diversity, more diverse thinking in the design of these platforms, again, whether it be your phone, or certainly, these very powerful platforms that are making decisions about hiring, about selecting, about inferring knowledge. So I think the why is pretty much right in front of us every day, isn't it, Jenine?

Absolutely. I love that example. And some of the-- I'm not sure if you know. One of the most interesting example-- and I'm sure people are not really proud of it.

But when we started using our phones to take videos, the videos would always be of a certain orientation. And it would always default to a certain orientation. And that was because it didn't actually allow for people with left hands-- left-handed people, I should say.

Left hands. Left hands. We all have left hands, but sorry, left-handed people. And so I guess, that concept of we just-- there's diversity in so many different parts. It's not around just gender specifically, but so many ways that we can tap into all of our awesomeness.

Yeah, that's a really good point. Coming back against the impact of Techgirls, this is the 10-year anniversary of the foundation. So lots of girls have passed through the program. And as you say, they can start the program as early as age six. Is that right?

Correct. We generally start it at eight. But we've had seven-year-olds say, can we be in the program? And they've built apps to look for animals in their local community and track them, so certainly.

The research tells us that girls opt out as young as six out of STEM. And that's why we're open from that age. But certainly, we run workshops as young as we can to open the possibilities for young people that technology can be used for good.

And so let's talk a little bit about the impact over the years. It'd be wonderful just to hear some stories from you. What a great job have, to be able to get up every morning and young woman by woman be able to shape their thinking about STEM and in careers. It'd be wonderful just to hear a little bit more about the program you run and the impact it's had.

Absolutely. I guess, we started-- so we launched 10 years ago, International Women's Day 2014. And it was really, for me, about turning research into practice. We know what the problem is. We know why we don't have enough women in the technology space and more broadly in the STEM space. What can we practically do to change that?

So I designed a program called Techgirls to essentially address that problem. And it's really around lack of visible female role models and then also, what do people in technology do? So we know what a doctor does. We know what a lawyer does. But what does a technologist do?

And even myself on a day-to-day basis, I'm not sure what most of us do because we make up all of these names for creative things that we do. But certainly, there's a lot of space for finding out what people and what the possibilities are for careers in this space. So we created a campaign called Tech Girls Are Superheroes, which is a series of books that profile women in technology as superhero characters who changed the world.

And so I'd love to throw it out there to you, Cynthia. And you don't have to answer right now. But what is your superpower? And your superpower is not about being awesome at everything. But what is that one thing that makes you different, that makes you amazing, and helps you bring your awesomeness to life?

And I know for myself, it's I'm really good at bringing people together. I have this great ability to bring people together. But I guess, on the funnier side, when I talk to young people, I often say it's about my smile because there's something powerful.

And it's almost physically impossible if you smile at someone for them to frown at you. So if you're in a challenging time, smile at them and see how it goes. But I think it's about, how do you bring your best self to the world?

And for me in STEM and in technology, it was about, how do I engage young people in a place where they don't feel welcome, they don't feel comfortable? So let's bring your superpower. And you might not feel imposter syndrome. You might not feel 100% like you're worthy of being that person or that place. But bring it to that, and give it a try.

And I love when I talk to young people and I say, could you do x technically? And they go, no, no, no, I couldn't do that. And I say, well, if you could do it as a superhero, how would you do it? And they give you 10 ways they could do it.

And it's this amazing thing when we're someone else or we have a piece of jewelry, or a piece of a pair of shoes, or whatever it is to bring our best selves forward. And so that's really what Techgirls is about. It's about engaging young people to find their best selves, to realize that STEM is for them. And we talk a lot about STEM plus X.

So what is your X factor? What do you love about the world? Is it animals? Is it health care? Is it the environment? What is it, and how do you bring STEM to that?

And STEM is in everything that we do. So if we can do STEM plus X and find a way for young people to be engaged-- and that's what we do in our programs. So we've done it through our books in terms of role models and finding ways to have careers. We've done that through our competition of 12 weeks.