STEM Diversity Podcast

Madeleine Ong is a project manager at Intel. She is the light show services lead working on the drone light show team. She plans and executes all drone light shows, including the one for the recent Winter Olympics in South Korea this past February. Drone light shows are a new form storytelling and entertainment, where drones effectively act as flying pixels in the nighttime sky.

Robin Mazumder is a PhD candidate in cognitive neuroscience at University of Waterloo. He studies how urban design influences the psychology of individuals living in cities. In particular, he leverages immersive virtual reality to simulate cityscapes.

Robin is also actively engaged in various urban design programs and organizations throughout the world, frequently traveling, and presenting at conferences.

Ayantu Regassa is an Android Developer at McMaster-Carr. She studied mechanical engineering in college at MIT, but was given the opportunity to learn software development on the job and took it. She explains how being a software developer is much more than just writing code. It involves working with many different people in different roles.

Ayantu was born in Ethiopia and moved to the United States at the age of 8. She talks about growing up in a strict family and how that influenced her career path.

Maurice Cherry is Content Marketer at Fog Creek Software, based in New York City. Maurice is based out of Atlanta, since much of the workforce is remote.

Fog Creek makes software to help the lives of software developers. Other companies spun out of Fog Creek, including Trello and Stack Overflow. Also FogBugz, now Manuscript, came out of Fog Creek. They recently released a new product called Glitch, a flexible tool to create software, even for not especially technical users.

As Content Marketer, Maurice creates content about Fog Creek’s products and tells stories about the products. Maurice says that there is a discovery process when people find apps and services to use. He says that that gap is marketing. So that could be ads, creating content, creating videos, or going to the communities that can use the products. Marketing is a wayfinder, helping companies find the users for their products.

Maurice’s background is in technology. He has a Master’s degree. And he’s worked at NASA, and in startups. He’s done web development and design, including founding his own design studio. He has a podcast called Revision Path.

Maurice talks about the diversity and inclusion climate and initiatives in the tech industry now.

Dr. Marie McNeely is the host of People Behind the Science Podcast, a show highlighting scientists in various fields. Dr. McNeely has a background in neuroscience and was even a faculty professor in the field for a short period, before she decided to pursue her passion in communicating science and helping organizations with their digital and content strategy. She has since founded Unfold Productions to do so.

Dr. Kirsten Thomas is Associate Veterinarian at Toledo Zoo and Aquarium Department of Animal Health and Nutrition. Along with her colleagues, she takes care of the animals at the zoo on a daily basis. She also does research in the animals, especially in the areas of animal conservation. She collaborates with counterparts who do research outside zoo captivity, in order to better understand animals overall. Dr. Thomas grew up liking animals, and had some experience with medicine in college. But she ended up being a high school science teacher, teaching inner city students. But she then changed careers afterward, going to vet school, working at a clinic, and eventually ending up as Associate Veterinarian at Toledo Zoo. Visit stemdiversitypodcast.com.

Dr. Bethany Brookshire is a science education writer, writing for Science News and Science News for Students. These are publications from the nonprofit, Society for Science and the Public. She's previously blogged for Scientific American too. Bethany talks about her science writing, and how it is used by teachers as an extra classroom resource and read by students. Bethany talks about the lack of diversity in sources when it comes to science journalism. She talks about some recent corrective efforts in this area, including Diverse Sources and 500 Women Scientists. Bethany is a host on the Science for the People podcast. She has a PhD from Wake Forest University in Pharmacology. Visit stemdiversitypodcast.com.

Dr. Christian Douglas is Senior Statistician at Duke University, where she supports researchers in the School of Nursing. She works on a variety of different healthcare and medicine projects. In particular, she helps researchers secure funding by detailing the statistics work that would need to be done, as part of grant proposals. Her background is in statistics, especially in the healthcare space. Christian says broader exposure to STEM fields to young folks will help improve diversity in these fields. Often times underrepresented folks, especially those in rural areas, aren't aware that these fields even exist. She recalls her own experience growing up in rural Alabama. In this regard, Christian has participated in NSBE in the past, and is part of panel discussions as well. Christian previously got a PhD in Biostatistics at UNC Chapel Hill. Visit stemdiversitypodcast.com.

Kishau Rogers is a serial tech entrepreneur based out of Richmond, Virginia. She's started a number of companies, including Websmith Studio, a software development firm offering custom solutions for customers. She's also started Time Study, a company that creates tools to help businesses more efficiently handle time reporting. She started bigThinking, an initiative to help people thinking more broadly and generate better ideas with regard to building scalable business solution. bigThinking offers resources and training. Kishau studied computer science at Virginia Commonwealth University, when there weren't very many women or people of color. She talks about diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and how she shapes those cultures in her own companies, including building diverse leadership teams from the outset. Visit stemdiversitypodcast.com.

Dr. Raychelle Burks is Assistant Professor at St. Edwards University Department of Chemistry. Dr. Burks is an analytical chemist. She does research in color sensors, fluorescence sensors, chemiluminescence sensors, and in general, systems to find chemicals. This work has a wide array of applications, such as field tests in natural disaster scenarios. Dr. Burks is an active science communicator. She's the manager of the DIY Science Zone at GeekGirlCon. She writes for Chemistry World in the area of forensic science, aimed at lay people. She's on a television show called Outrageous Acts of Science on the Science Channel. Dr. Burks is the only scientist in her family. But her family are big consumers of education in general. At a young age, she was already in a book club. She spent a lot of time in the library. In her family, knowing things and having an answer is really cool. She was encouraged to work hard and make progress. Because on a school trip she got to interact with some FBI science people, she got interested in science. She did her Bachelor's at University of Iowa, her Master's at Nebraska Weslelyan University, and her PhD at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In regards to diversity and inclusion, she says that often times institutions and try to hire more diversely and ask those folks to solve the problem. She doesn't think that's the right way to address it. The responsibility should not be solely on these folks. She says that there is a lot of work to do. She says there's two problems: Retention and recruitment. She says systems of oppression have to be removed. Cannot just tinker. Also she says this is an area of scholarship in itself. She says that for diversity and inclusion in STEM, we need to listen to our colleagues in the humanities to help us, since they are doing very good work in this area to identify the problems and collect the data. Visit stemdiversitypodcast.com.