Girls Like You Don’t Go To College

MY band director told me I couldn't play the marching timbale drums with these big drums, and I was first chair percussion and I said why can't I, and he said because you're a girl. And I'm like I'm not gonna change that. Why else can't I play that? And he said because you're not strong enough. They're heavy. Okay, now that I can solve for and so all summer long I worked out in my very makeshift crude way, but then by the time school was starting again, I could carry those drums and march up and down football fields and march in parades.

So that lesson of not taking no the first time, and also when my college counselor I went to, I had signed up for college counseling, I was waiting in the lobby and she looked out and she said why are you here? I said I'm here for college counseling and she said girls like you don't go to college, which was very harsh. I've gone back and I've looked and statistically she was correct, but that still didn't make it right, but you know what, to me that was my first no. I stood up and I walked into her office. She followed me, then she said alright, what do you want to study, and I said I want to be an engineer and she laughed. She said girls aren't engineers, so I became a rocket scientist and went on.

You showed her.

Exactly. So that lesson, so that later in life, when I'd hear no, I'd figure out how do I get to a yes. And just in 2018, there was a study done here in Silicon Valley and women like me represent less than half of 1%. Okay, so that's basically not measurable, but less than half of 1% as tech execs. I was a tech exec decades ago. Wow, so that not taking no really allowed me to have a career that was a pioneer.

But the fact that the number is so low now decades later, decades after you were already a Latina

You know, that is why I do what I do. I could have gone back to technology, but I realized that there were a lot of people in decision-making positions in education who looked at kids like me, just like my guidance counselor decades ago - you don't have a future, you don't fit in, so I know that we have to expand the pipeline. So for me, that's one of the reasons I started telling my story and why I wrote my book, a middle school memoir, Path to the Stars. I was very specific about making sure that I did something for middle school, and that's why at Girl Scouts, I'm so focused on making sure that we have really great engaging programs around science, technology, engineering and math. And we do. In the last three years, we've developed 100 new badges and programs. I'll tell you, the girls are loving them. The engagement levels are way up.