Girls-Robotics

The field of robotics is growing very quickly as is the push to get students access to and excited about the STEM education needed to create the technology and artificial intelligence that is emerging in several different industries. Despite this push, minorities and girls are still extremely underrepresented in STEM careers.

One school in the northeast Bronx is making its mark with the first all-girls team to compete in a national robotics competition. Led by coach Sheree Petrignani, the Comets, from St. Catharine’s Academy, will take its Cobra robot, a unique and smaller triangular robot, to the national stage at the VEX U.S. Open in Waukee, Iowa.

SEE ALSO: FutureWork: The Olympics of Robotics

“My mission in life is to recruit as many young women into the field of STEM,” Petrignani tells Narratively. “These are where the scholarships are; these are where the jobs are going to be.”

Petrignani built the robotics program from the ground up when she came to the school in 2011. It took her a year to design the curriculum and recruit students for the competition team. To pique interest, she designed a summer intensive course for potential middle school talent, encouraging promising students to register for high school robotics.

Team leader Angelique Taveras, 17, says robotics has helped her build the foundation of who she is and seeing her older teammates receive college scholarships to pursue engineering degrees inspired her to chase the same goal. In December, Taveras found out from the Posse Foundation she was one of ten students from minority backgrounds selected to attend Lafayette College class of 2021 on a full-ride.

FULL STORY: Meet the All-Girls Competitive Robotics Team from The Bronx

More and more schools, companies and organizations are recognizing the need to garner interest in STEM fields that are growing at a rapid rate and are working to get young people the skills they need to fill these jobs. Some examples of these programs are highlighted below.

Girls Who Code is one organization who is helping bridge the gap and start a pipeline of talent as early as middle school across all 50 states.

MORE: Girls Who Code: Nurturing the Next Generation of Engineering Leaders

Toyota is one example of a company that has partnered with schools to re-design education to fill millions of highly-technical jobs with people able to do them. By giving students the opportunity for hands-on training that will result in a job out-of-school, the program is breaking the stereotypes of skilled trades while filling the skills gap.

MORE: FutureWork: Model of the Future

The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and the Siemens Foundation have joined forces to raise the profile of middle-skill jobs in STEM fields and the community college programs that deliver first-rate preparation of young adults for such jobs.

MORE: Raising the Profile of Careers in STEM Fields

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.