On this episode of Humans, On Rights, we sit down with Suzanne Winterflood, Program Manager of WISE Kinetic Energy — Manitoba's largest STEM outreach program. What started over 35 years ago as a small group of professors working to bring more girls into science and engineering has grown into a province-wide initiative reaching over 43,000 young people a year.

And yet, Suzanne is the first to admit: the needle hasn't moved nearly as far as it should have. This conversation gets into what equitable access to STEM education actually looks like — and what keeps getting in the way.

We're talking:

• Why early exposure to STEM matters most, and why grades 8 and 9 are such a critical turning point for girls
• The barriers specific to Black and Indigenous youth in accessing STEM education and careers
• Why WISE Kinetic Energy is building toward land-based, culturally specific programming for Indigenous youth
• The role of undergraduate students as near-peer role models — and why that model works
• How AI hype is pulling government funding away from the foundational, youth-focused work that actually builds the next generation of workers

WISE Kinetic Energy website