Advocate for Girls in STEM

I’m thrilled to welcome our special guest. She’s an advocate for girls in STEM. Please welcome Lexi Polevoi @learnwithmslexie.

LEXIE:  I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Stephanie.

 Thanks for being here. I would love for you to start out by telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

LEXIE:  I am an empathy driven founder, entrepreneur, product manager, and educator. I’m a San Francisco native, and in addition to being a tech professional, I spend my free time teaching girls all about STEM.

That is so neat. Wow! You have a lot of things on your resume there. And I’m wondering what inspired you to empower girls in STEM?

Where My Girls At?

 LEXIE: I think the biggest thing for me was that, at each level of my education, I noticed a drop off of women in STEM. Once I hit college, what I started to notice was, okay, in my introductory class, there were some women in STEM, but as I went further in the degree, as I kind of continued along the advanced classes, I would see fewer and fewer girls continuing along. And then where that really came to life was in the workforce. Similarly, at kind of the introductory level, I would see other women (specifically this was in a product management role). I did see other women, but as I started looking up the ladder of leadership, I would see women yet dropping off at higher levels, which was very jarring for me. I just think with all of the talk about getting women into stem, specifically into careers like product management or software engineering, I expected that like that shift would kind of go all the way up. That’s just not something I saw at all. So a big piece of it was definitely just my own personal experience in the tech industry.

And then that inspired me to do a little bit of research on my end. I found out that currently, as of 2024, only about 10.4 percent of CEOs in the S&P 500 are women, so like a very small percentage of CEOs are women right now. So that was another kind of like sirens alert to me that, okay so now we’re starting to teach them at younger levels, but what does that mean? What does that mean for the future of companies, of leadership? And if there is this kind of disconnect where we have girls learning about STEM at early ages, but we don’t have this equality or inclusivity continuing at leadership levels in STEM, what can I do to kind of like piece together that puzzle and make sure that girls are equipped to kind of go the path, go the journey to leadership and really kind of offer their unique skills (or I like to call them their personal stem superpowers) at higher levels.

Why Girls in STEM Matters

Okay, that’s really fascinating that, not only were you able to observe this, you literally lived this experience. Looking around you, you’re like, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here?” And from there, you’re like, “I’m going to do something about this.” And I think that is so remarkable. So why do you think it’s important for girls to start developing STEM skills before they’re adults, before they get into college and into the workforce?

LEXIE:  I think there’s a few different reasons. I think the first is, as with any skill, the earlier you’re introduced to it, the more time you have to hone your craft and to kind of get really good at things. So I think that’s one reason, especially going into the fields where the group you belong to, for example women, is underrepresented, early exposure is great. I think another thing is, to kind of create the type of change that I think needs to happen at all levels, we just really need to get girls getting their hands dirty in STEM as early as possible so that they kind of get rid of this idea that there is this limitation on them, that they can’t pursue stem because they’re women. So I really think the sooner we introduce it, the more time they have to hone their craft, the more time they have to explore different stem avenues. Which hopefully kind of gets rid of the one and done: I try one part of STEM, I try to code, I’m not good at it, STEM is not for me. It gets rid of that attitude.

I think the last thing I would bring up is that, I think currently what I observed among the more majority of groups in STEM when I started in college in computer science, a lot of those adults came from either a gaming background or more in depth kind of technical background. So I think that a lot of times people that are more likely to sign up for computer science sometimes have that background. So again, introducing it in this way is kind of a way that we can level the playing field.

Role Models and Mentors Needed

 Yeah. What sort of things prevent girls from pursuing STEM interests, in your opinion or also in what you’ve observed?

LEXIE:  One of the huge ones is lack of role models or lack of mentors. I’ve written this entrepreneurship curriculum that I teach as an after school enrichment course to elementary school girls. One of the things that I observe among these girls is, a lot of times when we start with an exercise like, “Let’s think of people in our lives that are in STEM and name some of them.” A lot of them have a hard time thinking of a woman. Especially as children, they’re very visual, like you can kind of see someone doing something, that means I can try to do that thing. When you don’t have that visual model, it’s a lot harder I think to feel that that’s like something that you can do. So at that level, I think the lack of being able to visualize someone in that role makes it hard.

And then I think once we kind of scale up to the higher levels, so for example when you’re in college or early in the workforce, not having a role model or mentor can be hard because: A) there’s less support maybe, B) you kind of are just like looking for someone to validate your experience as well and kind of help give you little tips to navigate the beginnings of your career. So I think that is a huge piece, is finding a role model or a mentor.

And I think what kind of goes hand in hand with that is, I think a barrier is also lacking confidence or like a support system. So I think that it also becomes really important that you either find support, whether that be through that mentor or role model, or through a friend – somebody that’s gonna take this journey with you, or at least be cheering you on from the side so that hiccups or moments of failure feel less isolating and are less likely to like totally derail you from a STEM trajectory.

Girls Should Stretch Their STEM Skills

 Yeah. Well, I imagine that in your curriculum and when you’ve worked with girls, you have been teaching them not just like character traits and development, but also like helping encourage them and guide them in how to overcome hurdles that likely will be presented, as they work through their future in STEM. Are there any that you want to highlight or that you can encourage our girls listening, give them a little taste of what it’s like to be in a workshop with Ms. Lexie?

LEXIE:  Yes, totally. So I think, aside from building their character traits and identifying their strengths, a couple of things that I really try to incorporate in the curriculum are skills that are involved in actual product life cycles or stem development cycles. So what I mean by that is, I try to give them a real world experience of what it’s like to be working in STEM or creating a STEM product. As with any real world simulation or experience, you will run into real world challenges. So in the course, I model the life cycle of a stem product. In my most frequently taught course, it centers fully around entrepreneurship and having the girls, once they’ve been introduced to STEM, form groups and kind of go through creating this product that they end up presenting. Along the way they run into the very similar hurdles that anyone in a STEM career might run into. So, one common one is difficulty collaborating, sometimes one student wants to run the whole show, the other student is sitting back just watching. So in a case like that, we’ll practice what is effective collaboration, what does it look like to take on different roles in a project? And then how do you decide who takes on which roles?

So in that example, communication also becomes important because we start to discuss what’s the best way to communicate in this group? No blanket communication method is going to work every time we’re in a group, so we’re going to need to reassess and understand these individuals and then how we can best sync up and work together.

So I think those skills are very naturally taught through going into this real world problem solving and product creation experiment, or in my case, lesson plan. And I think it really helps give them a taste for the types of skills that we need to start building early on. And it also helps them see that a lot of the skills that they need to build are things that are building off of their innate skills as human beings. I think it kind of takes away the mystery behind some of what goes on when you are in a STEM career.

The STEM Future is Female

I think that those are solid life skills too, that are applicable in a lot of different scenarios. And it’s also good to see, this isn’t just for working out friendship conflicts. You can also take a lot of those same things and apply them in a professional way because in teamwork and collaboration, the more heads, the better. And better things can happen, but a lot of people need to learn how to work together, how to listen to others. One thing I think that also is important–it’s not just for girls to see themselves in STEM and girls to work with girls in STEM. I think boys need to see girls in STEM too. I think they need to see that girls really do offer a lot of great attributes and different perspectives. As much as we do need girls to see themselves in it, we also need boys to see it too, to embrace it, and to learn how to collaborate with them as well. So I’m going to do a little plug there for everyone collaborating because everyone will benefit from it. On that line in your lifetime, what shifts do you hope to see with girls in STEM?

LEXIE:  I think one major shift I hope to see is more women in STEM at every level. I don’t think it’s realistic to be like, oh, every CEO should be a woman.  I think it’s we want women to be able to be at any level, both with what fits their skill set, what they want to be doing. Not every female in STEM wants to be a CEO, although some do. So I think one is just more women at every level. I would love to see more female CEOs in general, that is just something that I think needs to be far more equal. I think that goes back into your collaboration as well. It’s a ripple effect. If we have more female CEOs, hopefully that creates a more inclusive environment where you’ll have more women, all these different levels. And then men see more women, and it kind of all comes down to the bottom where we get all different types of people collaborating–men and women–and can create this very healthy ecosystem.

The other thing that I would bring up is I hope to see (and I guess this also builds off of, like you were saying, healthy collaboration between men and women) I just really hope to see healthy workforces where women are embraced, getting rid of maybe some of the exclusion that minority groups have faced. So just really creating healthy communities where women and men, all groups can appreciate their differences and leverage those differences because more voices means more perspectives. And especially as a product manager, I’m building for real people, for real humans, so the more diverse voices I hear from, the better the product will be because I can have a better understanding of the types of users that are going to be using it.

So I think just seeing more women at all these different levels, healthier work environments, and more female CEOs crushing it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve definitely been loving this trend of female-founded companies and the highlighting female-founded companies. It’s pretty awesome.

The Right Path =/= The Easy Path

 Oh, I think that is fantastic. And I mean, with your mentorship and a lot of others who are getting more involved and realizing, “Whether or not I had someone to look up to, I want to help lift others.” And I appreciate that so much. I love the work that you are doing.  Okay. This could be any topic, but what is the most important thing you want girls listening to know?

LEXIE:  I think what I would say to girls is that you can do anything you set your heart to, you just have to believe in yourself. And the right path for you might not always be the easiest path. Even applying that to STEM, I think there’s also a misconception to be good at STEM, it should be super easy for you and it should be super innate. I don’t think that’s always the case. I think some of our best STEM leaders have to think through problems to come up with great solutions. So I would just say believe in yourself, and whatever you want to do, you are the only limitation to that. So just really believe in yourself, pursue the things that interest you, and get rid of the limitations that society has put around these things. As we’re seeing, this whole perception that only men could do STEM is very false.

How to Connect with Ms. Lexie

 Oh, that was so well said. Thank you for sharing that. Before we wrap up, I definitely want you to share where people can find and connect with you, whether that’s on social media or your website with your workshops, how can they connect with you?

LEXIE:  Yes. So as I mentioned before, I have this entrepreneurship curriculum and I teach it in two ways: I teach it either as an afterschool enrichment series of courses or as individual workshops. So to learn more about those, you can go to my website, learnwithmslexie.com. You can also go to my Instagram which is @learnwithmslexie. You can reach me via email at learnwithmslexie@gmail.com.

Perfect. Lexie, it has been a pleasure speaking with you. Again, I admire what you’re doing. I am so glad that we have other mentors out there, especially in STEM, who are helping other girls with their futures in STEM. So thank you so much for being on the podcast!

LEXIE:  Thank you and shout out to you as well for bringing in so many interesting speakers and for sharing so many resources with girls.

  Oh, I’m happy to do it. Our girls are amazing.