When career problem-solver and long-time technologist Abi Olukeye became a mother to two girls, the world of science, technology, engineering and math (known more commonly as STEM), started to look a bit different.
While she was familiar with the gender gap in STEM fields — in 2018, only 28 percent of those jobs were held by women — she began to notice a resource gap for children, too.
“I had two daughters, and realized I had to do more work to make sure they’re widely exposed to a variety of topics,” Olukeye said. “It was harder than I thought, and I started digging into STEM for girls.”
The result was Smart Girls HQ, which Olukeye launched in 2018. It has two goals: to foster a love of STEM learning in girls and expose them to the wide variety of STEM careers. Its flagship product, the Raising Smart Girls online community, offers insights, editorial content and a newsletter for parents, teachers and other adults looking to foster an early love of STEM. Need a suggestion for a fun STEM-related toy, activity or topic of interest for girls ages 5-12? Olukeye's automated platform will generate a tailored list to point the way.
The company’s technology partner is UNC Charlotte’s Computing and Informatics Department, which has already developed a unique, AI-driven recommendation system to personalize insights. Research has been led by department chair Dr. Mary Lou Maher. In addition to UNC Charlotte students, Olukeye’s team includes two strategic partners, freelance designers, writers, developers, teachers and curriculum designers.
“Raising Smart Girls focuses on parents and the village around the girls,” she said. “Once the village is strong, the girl becomes interested.”
This type of community is something that Olukeye benefited from during her own childhood in Nigeria.
“I’m interested in moving the needle on the women in STEM careers number."
“Everyone in Nigeria knows the way to be mobile economically is to be educated,” she told Charlotte Inno. “Education has been a big part of my life.”
Upon coming to the U.S. for high school, Olukeye found herself surrounded by consistent technological opportunities — opportunities that helped develop her love of STEM. However, upon taking a college computer programming course while still in high school, she noticed there weren't many other women in the class. The reason, she believed, was that the subject wasn't being taught in a way that many female students liked to learn.
The pattern didn't change when Olukeye studied computer science at Virginia Tech; once again, she found herself as one of the few women in her major's classes.
She knew it didn't have anything to do with ability, and rather a lack of early encouragement and passion-building for STEM that had female colleagues pursuing other paths.
That's why, as she develops Smart Girls, Olukeye prioritizes speaking with its target audience.
“I want to take the time to know what girls are interested in,” she said. As for Olukeye, “I’m interested in moving the needle on the women in STEM careers number. Right now we’re mainly testing out resources in pilot programs and it’s been neat to see what people are interested in.”
Olukeye and Smart Girls will be operating at Dorothy J. Vaughan Academy of Technology, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools STEM Magnet School with a focus on coding, where many of those conversations take place (and girls represent only 30 percent of the student body). This new program has attracted the attention of a host of different sponsors, such as Skookum, Coaching Right Now, Discovery Place, African American Community Foundation and the Charlotte Area Technology Collaborative.
Another milestone for the team is the completion of a formal pitch to the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research program.
“The anticipated NSF funding will help us get to a beta version of our product and early users in the next 12 months,” she said. More users would build upon Smart Girls' monthly reach of about 30,000 parents across each of its channels.
Ultimately, all this work has a straightforward purpose: a world where every girl is equipped to shape the world around her.
“Our goal is not to make everyone a coder,” Olukeye said. “It’s to help everyone find their place in a digital economy.”
