AiC Members in the News (January 2020)

• AiC Community Members Sanja Kirova, Mireina Keith, and Kelly Schaffer were among the co-founders of She Can Tech, an AspireIT program designed to introduce middle school girls to computing so they could participate in more advanced STEM activities as they got older. In this article, find out how the program is continuing to grow!
• “I aspire to revolutionize the perceptions of females in technology by empowering females in my community as we encourage more females to pursue a career in STEM.” // In this opinion column published in the Los Angeles Times High School Insider, AiC Community Member Vivian Wang shares why she’s excited about cybersecurity and how she’s using tech to help solve an important environmental problem.
• “Even now, you ask girls ‘What does a scientist look like?’ They’ll say, ‘A man.’ But 10, 20 years from now, they are the face of STEM.” // AiC Community Member MaryAnne Onianwah explains what inspired her to start Girl Powered, a program that introduces elementary school students to STEM activities, in this article. 
• “There’s only two types of people in the world: those that use computers, and those that know how to program computers and teach them to do new things.” // U.S. Representative Greg Gianforte presented 2019 National Educator Award Recipient Buffy Smith with the Spirit of Montana Commendation and praised her work in expanding students’ access to computing classes. Get the full story here.
• In this profile, AiC Community Member Ava DeLaCruz talks about the projects she worked on as an intern at Amazon and reflects on the importance of mentorship, especially for women and members of other groups that are underrepresented in the computing field. 
• “‘Computing has revolutionized the world,’ Amulya said, and it will continue to do so. That’s why it’s important that a wide variety of people are writing code so that future developments serve all kinds of people.” // In this article, AiC Community Member Amulya Garimella is recognized for her work to make computing programs more accessible for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds.

January Shoutouts

It’s Shoutout Season! AiC Community members are being recognized for their accomplishments in local news outlets across the country, and we couldn’t be happier to see them getting the visibility they deserve. Here’s who we spotted in January: Anika Puri, the team at Reinvented Magazine, Elizabeth Landin, Mireille Boumedine, and Perisa Ashar.