We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ryan Daza. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ryan below.

Hi Ryan, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I am the executive director of a competitive science and STEM leadership pathways program for students PK to 12th grade focused on systemically excluded students, many of whom I now currently employ to run the program (all of our employees are students – part of our leadership pathways and a aside from the competitive robotics programming). There is really no one else who has done this model before as a nonprofit so essentially I had to wing it. I had inspiration from the National Society of Black Engineers (where my sons were doing robotics in Maryland) but I had to figure out how to operate and what the content would look like. I was not afraid to fail (and did so many times) and I knew I would succeed so I quit my job, clenched my teeth, and entered the world risk and entrepreneurship!

We were in Maryland because there were no independent competitive robotics programs in Washington, DC. There I found a niche. I was also coming out of a story about the Afghanistan all-girl robotics team that were having problems getting a visa and being discriminated against on so many levels. A year later, I launched Capitol City Robotics in my living room to parents from my kids school. Seven years later and a pandemic, we have over 300 students as team members, team mentors, interns, managers-in-trainig, program managers, student board members, and a chief of staff. We also have a clubhouse cleaning crew, a team auditor, and a technician. All these positions are held by our students 14 to 18 years old, who are girls and/or students of color. On top of that we have over 45 competitive science teams that have competed in 31 tournaments in regional, state, national, and even the Robotics World Championship!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Ryan Daza, a first generation American (parents from Mexico) with a background in social science and economics. I never thought I would end up being a business owner but I never thought much at all; I just did, and through my failures, found out what worked.

I founded Capitol City Robotics in 2018 with the idea to provide DMV students with the opportunity to do robotics and the highest level. There were not many opportunities in Washington, DC so I decided to create them myself. In the beginning we were very small with around 25 students, operating in cafeterias, basements, even in abandoned buildings until we finally settled into a small school space in Columbia Heights. Demand was high then and is today. We are providing content that is not provided anywhere else.

In order to afford the space, I need to generate more revenue so I decided to expand. There, I saw an opportunity. We were succeeding so well in competitive science, I realized I had some of the top students in the city. Why not start with them? It worked. I am now not only providing a vehicle for keeping a students interest in robotics, I am providing them with adult level jobs to develop so many other soft/workforce skills that we know robots cannot perform. These include oral and written presentation, executive functioning, time management, eliminating the fear of failure, and confidence through robust success. We are doing this with underrepresented students or students that traditionally have not had these opportunities and creating a market where one did not exist before!

Our students are heavily retained and have been in robotics and in the pathways program all the way into college. This has not happened in previous generations. I am very excited to see what the future with them at the helm will look like!

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

When I developed Capitol City Robotics’s mission I was approached with the question: How? How will I fill up the organization’s competitive robotics team with systemically excluded students? I found out a way on accident: ask.

It seems simple, but if it were, having more girls in tech would have been answered already. I found out by watching football talking heads one day. The host was asking a question “why are so many quarterbacks handsome?” Now it irrelevant whether they are, but his reasoning stuck with me. He theorized that we have a perception of what a QB looks like, and then encore that stereotype. His story is that when an adult see a handsome boy, they put a football in their hands and told them that they should be a quarterback. Again, whether this is true or not is irrelevant. I applied the same approach: anytime I saw a girl, I told them they should do robotics; over and over and over again until they joined! And it worked – our top program managers and our teams going to National and World robotics championships are all girls and students of color :)

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

My story of resilience is weathering failure. If you talk to my students they would roll their eyes because I talk so much about failure. I push my students, while recognizing their emotions, to see failure as data. Failure is information that will help you succeed. Every failure has a new avenue to success, and sometime more failure. Failure can hit hard, especially for my younger students, so I teach them my resilience from my own failures from starting and running a small business. I fail constantly; and it does feel bad, but I have taught myself to brush it off and keep pushing. Through that method, I have the largest robotics institution in the DMV with a model that does not exist in our region. Embracing failure, while being there for students when they do, is our best illustration of resilience for our institution and our students.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.capitolcityrobotics.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitolcityrobotics/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/capitolcityrobotics
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-daza-b1448668/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@RyanDaza-sg9mb

Image Credits

Visuals by Jaemin