We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jie & Nithya Wang & Achanta. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jie & Nithya below.

Jie & Nithya, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Our mission is to inspire girls, specifically in areas with less academic and economic opportunity, to pursue interests in the predominantly male field of STEM. This mission is particularly meaningful to us because we created it based on personal experiences we had in the past. When we first started participating in STEM-related activities and events in middle school we quickly noticed that there was a major gender gap, and resources and opportunities were not always available to everyone. By providing a platform and network for girls to carry out their ideas and interact with professionals, we hope to help change the field for future girls that enter it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

STEM4fem is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in Memphis, Tennessee working to help girls pursue interests in STEM-related fields. In a society where innovation and change are becoming increasingly important, we hope to show young girls the potential for STEM to change the world. As mentioned before we founded it in the summer of 2017 because we noticed two major issues in STEM fields: there is a major gender gap, and resources and opportunities are not always available to everyone. We have two parts to our organization in order to achieve these goals, the competition and the workshops. We have held workshops with a number of organizations across Memphis such as Bridge Builders and Girls Inc. in the past. Through our competition, girls learn how to use STEM to solve real-life problems and apply it in their projects for the STEM4fem competition. We recently started a chapter program where girls in high school can start a chapter of our organization at their high schools and develop leadership skills. We currently have three chapters and hope to expand that in the future.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

We first met in middle school and became friends through working on a science project that was assigned to us in class. We had many similar interests, so we stayed close friends outside of that class. As we went into high school we partnered up on several other science projects and entered many competitions. Through participating in these competitions we realized the major issues in the STEM field and decided to work on some of them by creating STEM4fem together.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, we were forced to make major changes to our organization and pivot. Prior to 2020 all of our operations were in person and we relied heavily on in-person interactions whether that was through our workshops or competitions. We decided to move most of our programs online which was at first challenging because of all of the hands-on activities we used in workshops. After shifting some of our focus to virtual resources and tools we were able to change our programming to a fully virtual platform. Ultimately this proved to be a beneficial pivot for us because we still maintain hybrid programming today. Although we are currently able to have some in-person programming, we also still utilize our virtual programs which have allowed us to reach a wider base of students.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.stem4fem.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stem4fem/?hl=en
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/STEM4femMemphis