We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carolyn He. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carolyn below.
Carolyn, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
Zoom audio-feedback is ghastly. This I discovered during a weekly WiSTEM Leadership meeting, wincing as a distorted version of my proposal echoed awkwardly.
My dilemma began with Zoom audio-feedback, but quickly evolved into a matter of Women in STEM’s organizational stability. My proposal to temporarily halt Ambassador Onboarding—the foundation of WiSTEM’s network of thousands—seemed entirely counter-intuitive to our growth. Was it too much work? Too much change? Risk? Back in September, I never would’ve considered freezing Onboarding, except now I suspected we needed to slow down for sustainable growth.
At first, the meeting was silent—far worse than any ghastly audio-feedback.
Then, Jamie from Outreach unmuted: “I’d love to check-in 1-1 with Chapters!”. Aparna from Partnerships added “We’ll start revamping partnerships”, and Coco announced, “I’ll prepare Instagram announcements!”. Slowly, what seemed like a far-fetched, far-flung plan began to take shape—slowly, but as surely as the smile spreading across my face. Seeing my team rally around an idea I carefully weighed, drafted, and re-drafted for weeks renewed my confidence, knowing they had my back. When I declared “perfect!”, an enthusiastic smattering of “perfects” echoed back.
Still, our troubles hardly ended that night. By leading weeks of scheduling nightmares, Calendly malfunctions, and unprecedented change, I’ve realized while leadership is guiding a team toward success, it’s equally courage…flexibility…faith. It’s taking intuitive risks and acknowledging failure as potential outcomes. It’s being the brightest smile in the meeting—despite ghastly audio-feedback.
In practice, this entailed creating new systems for Chapter check-ins, helping Aparna revitalize our partnership packet, and ensuring emails aligned with Coco’s posts. During meetings, we addressed concerns openly, reoriented Calendly based on user feedback, and celebrated small wins (0…100% domestic check-ins scheduled!) to keep morale high. By the two-month Onboarding freeze’s end, event engagement increased 161%. We secured 4 huge partnerships and initiated regional in-person events. Most importantly, those Zoom meetings were where every voice felt heard and valued—despite ghastly audio-feedback. My take on leadership is never to have all the “answers” but to have resilience in navigating through the questions.
Carolyn, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Women in STEM (WiSTEM) is a global initiative that takes a dual social and technical approach to traditionally fact-oriented fields. More specifically, we are a national network of highschool girls working in Chapters across the world to uplift the voices of women in STEM while encouraging more girls to enter these fields. Though each Chapter conducts its independent activities, all act under the three main pillars of Networking, Outreach, and Mentorship.
1) Networking: At its heart, WiSTEM is the network it cultivates amongst girls from around the world. Our community is strengthened by monthly events like panel discussions, webinars, workshops, and coffee chats that I collaborate with our partners, WiSTEM’s Director of Internal Affairs, and STEM professionals/college students/professors to organize. WiSTEM is proud to involve its partners throughout its organization-wide programming; as President, I manage productive collaborations while having appointed WiSTEM’s very first partnerships team. In independent Chapters, Networking is all about community-building and strengthening existing connections–involving everyone to promote female voices in STEM.
2) Outreach: Essential for involving others outside of the WiSTEM community is engaging more girls–especially younger ones–in STEM. Younger students look up to WiSTEM’s highschool members as role models; when they see WiSTEM Chapters organizing events, it strengthens their desire to participate in STEM. In short, WiSTEM’s Outreach Pillar extends beyond independent chapters to local communities, particularly involving marginalized groups/young girls! Chapters are required to organize at least one outreach activity with a younger or underserved community per scholastic year and are encouraged to participate in our Seasonal Drives to raise funds or donations for said communities. Moreover, to broaden its impact, WiSTEM uses social media platforms (Instagram, LinkedIn, website) to promote the visibility of women in STEM, planning to expand influence to short-form content (TikTok, Youtube) next year.
3) Mentorship: WiSTEM empowers young women pursuing STEM to find human connection in an increasingly tech-enabled world. In addition to hard skills, we are passionate about teaching members how to find role models in STEM and simultaneously become those role models for other young girls. Because mentorship is a critical component of increasing female participation in the STEM fields, we offer several initiatives for members to engage in mentorship, which will be covered in later responses.
Most importantly, we give highschool girls a seat at the table–whether on the National Leadership Team or as Ambassadors in individual Chapters–to recognize and exercise essential leadership skills critical for the STEM fields. We work towards engaging young women early-on in potential careers and career paths in high-demand fields where females are historically under-represented.
The unfortunate truth is that though our members have been fortunate to find empowerment through WiSTEM, research highlights a reality where young girls are not encouraged to pursue STEM at the same rate as boys. And while, as a society, we have so far to go and so much work to do where equity is concerned, WiSTEM’s members remind us that we also have the people to go the distance and make the difference.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
WiSTEM was founded in 2017 by Ananya Asthana, who was dismayed to discover the lack of female-oriented STEM organizations upon entering high school and sought to develop a community around being a female pursuing STEM. At our heart, WiSTEM has always been a social approach to a fact-oriented field.
I personally joined WiSTEM in search of community and founded my school’s WiSTEM Chapter hoping to establish a space for other girls in my STEM-heavy high school. Physics club? Math club? Robotics? All male-dominated. Establishing my Chapter wasn’t easy, but navigating unprecedented frustrations and bureaucratic uncertainty became more bearable with the support of a global network of passionate girls who had my back.
Across the organization, whether Ambassadors face similar administrative hurdles or not, each joins to promote WiSTEM’s mission of achieving gender parity in STEM. After all, WiSTEM exists because women continue to face significant barriers to entering STEM—barriers that even our Ambassadors experience while trying to establish WiSTEM Chapters. Those range from administrative hurdles when establishing Chapters to turnover issues when Ambassadors graduate, with the occasional collapse of Chapters due unsustained engagement. While these setbacks are frustrating, they emphasize why WiSTEM is so powerful; together, we tired of a playing field where the odds often felt stacked and decided it was time for change. Our core goal is to engage girls early in high-demand career paths where women are historically underrepresented. In the US STEM workforce of 36 million individuals, only 28% are women–a percentage that dwindles further for women of color.
The paradox here lies in that diversity is critical for the future of STEM. Diversity enhances creativity, productivity, and opportunity. Diversity sparks innovation, cooperation, and education. Most importantly, diversity EMPOWERS. Specifically, empowering women to enter leadership roles in STEM can make all the difference, as it has for our members. WiSTEM gives high school girls a seat at the table–whether on the national leadership board or as Ambassadors of Chapters–to recognize and exercise essential leadership skills that will support them in STEM fields. This hands-on engagement is critical when that’s where women currently only hold 14% of executive positions and where 65% of girls never even get the chance to try.
In 2017, Women in STEM was founded as a mechanism to bridge the gap between social justice and academic fields. Since then, WiSTEM has expanded to serve 6,840 members in 241 Chapters across 24 countries and 34 states. In my tenure as President from 2023-2025, I’ve grown the total number of Chapters in WiSTEM by 170% after revamping our outreach processes and initiating active outreach. From 2024-2025 alone, WiSTEM added 117 new Chapters. Meanwhile, membership in WiSTEM’s network has increased by 223%, while the average member count per Chapter increased from 23 members to 28 members, demonstrating deepeer engagement not only within the broader organization but within individual Chapters as well.
Our work is grounded in the notion that a sustainable future is an equitable one. Our pillars: Networking, Mentorship, and Outreach take community based approaches to fostering gender parity in STEM, creating social supports that allow girls and genderqueer high school students to engage richly with the sciences. Our mission is to empower and encourage high school girls to be a part of the movement to increase female representation in STEM.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
WiSTEM’s appeal lies in its community built for high school students, built by high school students. Each independent WiSTEM chapter is led by 1-3 designated ambassadors who report directly to the central organization, which processes Chapter requests, updates, partnerships, and organization-wide events. In fact, one of WiSTEM’s most unique charms is that all our events and workshops are organized solely by highschool students. Our high school leadership team provides peer-based support to our Chapters, developing events, educational content, and exciting new initiatives that meet the ever-changing interests and needs of students today. Throughout the year, we offer several organization-wide engagements for members, including:
1. Virtual Programming (Panels, Coffee Chats, Workshops): Networking events allow us to organize events with industry professionals and academians to give the girls a tangible idea of what it means to be a women in STEM, allowing our members to access insightful content from anywhere in the world.
2. Media Features (Meet a Member Monday, Ambassador of the Month, Chapter Updates, Podcast): WiSTEM uses social media to promote the visibility of women in STEM, whether highlighting Chapter activities through Instagram features, organizing historical STEM-inist achivements, or interviewing alumnae on our podcast WiSDOM with WiSTEM.
3. Mentorship (Mentorship Program, Sister Chapter Initiative, Outreach activities): We pride ourselves on empowering young women pursuing STEM to find support and mentorship in an increasingly tech-enabled world. hard skills aside, we are passionate about teaching members how to find role models in STEM and simultaneously become those role models for other young women. Mentorship is a critical component of increasing female participation in the STEM fields. Younger students look up to WiSTEM’s highschool members as role models; when they see WiSTEM Chapters organizing events, it strengthens their desire to participate in STEM, and the same applies for all stages of the education-to-career STEM pipeline.
Though we’re a network of primarily high school girls, we always try to engage everyone in our mission–from all age groups, socioeconomic backgrounds, and gender identities. After all, gender equity in STEM can only be achieved on the basis that everyone is on board. Women in STEM affirms that everyone has a role in STEM, and works proudly to support inclusionary, equitable, and accessible engagement opportunities. While systemic change is necessary to achieve true equality, it is our hope that WiSTEM can challenge the attitudes surrounding women in STEM and fill in the critical opportunity gaps that leave high school girls and genderqueer students behind.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://womeninstem.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/womeninstem__org/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/women-in-stem-organization/
- Other: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/womeninstem_org
Image Credits
Carolyn He, Morris Hills Chapter