Street Roots • Jan. 8-14, 2016
News
Page 7
GIRLS INC., fro m page 5
“Coming from a Hispanic family,” she
said, “they don’t know where to sign up or
what to ask or what to do.”
If her daughter goes to college after
graduating from high school and the Eureka!
program, she will be the first in Barajas’
family to do so.
Nye said it’s important that Girls Inc.
continues contact with the girls even after
they enter college.
“The first three semesters of college -
that’s make-or-break time,” she said.
Applications for new Eureka! students,
who must be outgoing seventh-graders in
the Portland or Woodburn region, will be
available at girlsincpnw.org by Feb. 1. Girls
Inc. will accept applications through June,
but space is limited.
PHOTO BY WOJTEK RAJSKI
A participant at ChickTech: High School’s kickoff in November is about to pull stuffing out of
“STEM itself has been a hot topic on the
workforce development side for quite a
while, if you look at where our economy is
going,” said Chris Harder, the economic
development director at Portland
Development Commission.
He said diversifying the workforce
recently became a priority for Tech Town
Portland, a partnership between the PDC
and more than 20 tech-based companies,
including Puppet Labs, Jama and Elemental.
The collaboration, formed in 2013, is aimed
at showcasing Portland as an emerging tech
town and attracting new tech companies and
workers from out of state.
Its video boasting Portland as the ideal
a teddy bear. She programmed the circuit board in front o f her to light up different parts o f the
toy. Some girls programmed theirs to play music.
setting for tech industry has had more than
41,000 views online.
“A lot of these innovation-focused, fast
growing companies,” Harder said, “can’t hire
fast enough, and they are having difficulty
finding qualified talent here in Portland, but
Portland is not unique. The Bay Area runs
into this challenge. So does Boston, New
York and Seattle.”
Many blame the emergence of the tech
industry in San Francisco for making it
unaffordable for pre-existing residents.
Won’t attracting tech to Portland contribute
to its already dire housing crisis?
Harder said it’s complicated.
“We have dual concerns,” he said.
“There’s a gap between the number of
qualified workers and the number of job
openings they have. We want to help move
the needle on who’s getting these jobs.”
He said that while everyone agrees
affordable housing is needed, another
strategy for tackling the affordability issue is
to work with disconnected communities to
make sure they get the skills that will qualify
them for the jobs that pay well.
PHOTO BY JOE GLODE
Eboni Holmes, 14, is participating in her first year o f Eureka! with Girls Inc. o f the Pacific
Northwest. Here, she attends a weekend conference where girls meet with a panel o f prominent
women working in S T E M fields. Holmes plans to pursue a career in science when she’s older.
“It’s not one or the other,” he said. “I
think in order to solve these problems anti
make sure we don’t go the way of San
Francisco, because we don’t want to go that
way, we need to work on both of those.”
During the past five years, Harder said,
Portland’s seen an emergence of code and
technical training schools.
“A great example of one that focuses
specifically on women or girls is
ChickTech,” he said.
Janice Levenhagen-Seeley, a Portland
computer engineer, founded ChickTech in
2011.
“Janice realized after she had gotten her
degree and gone into software development
how hard it was in the industry for women.
Sexism was rampant, and there just weren’t
that many women in the field,” said Janelle
Coburn, ChickTech Portland’s co-lead. “It
really drove her to do something about it.”
Today, ChickTech has chapters in
technical hubs all over the country offering
tech-oriented events and workshops for K-12
girls and adult women who are interested in
switching careers.
More than 100 high school girls attended
its 2015 ChickTech: High School kickoff at
Portland State University in November, the
first in a seven-month series of mentoring
events and workshops.
“I have seen the number of women in
STEM decreasing,” Cobum said. “From
1991 to 2014, the number of women in
computing jobs went from 37 percent to 26
percent.”
She said her employer is currently
looking to hire a number of data scientists.
“We aren’t getting the female applicants,”
she said.
She said many women are likely to leave -
the industry in their first year due to male
chauvinistic work environments. She’s
worked various jobs as an analytics
consultant and systems analyst and said
she’s experienced sexism herself.
“I experienced that being a strong female
voice and being passionate about my work is
seen differently than males that exude the
same passion and the same strength,” she
said. “There’s a difference in treatment from
management.”
That’s one of the reasons Coburn is
involved with ChickTech, she said.
“I don’t want people to have to deal with
that, whether they he young women or
career-level women” she said.
| “I think, honestly, everyone needs;, to step
up for this. I don’t think it’s just women. We
need to have more men that are stepping up
for women in tech and realizing that there is
a gender disparity, because I hear a lot of
people - even close friends of mine - saying
that, ‘Well, you know, maybe women just
don’t like these jobs.’”
Between boys and girls, Girls Inc. director
Nye said the capabilities are “absolutely
equal.” The challenge, she said, “is getting
everyone to an equal playing field.”
As area nonprofits and tech industry
recruiters turn their attention toward girls,
changes are happening in the toy aisle too.
Frustrated with the lack of real science
kits for girls, two female scientists, who are
also moms, founded Yellow Scope in 2014.
This Portland-based company makes
chemistry sets and science kits for girls ages
8 to 12.
The packaging isn’t pink, and rather than
instructions for making soap and makeup,
the contents teach concepts like chemical
reactions and molecular motion.
emily@streetroots. org