Dedicated to inspiring young women and fighting gender disparities,  Sisters of STEM is a locally founded, global organization founded and led by junior Olivia Zhen. Some of Sisters of STEM’s initiatives include Instagram takeovers and interviews by professional women in STEM.

“I created Sisters of Stem as an organization dedicated to nurturing and inspiring young women who are looking to enter STEM fields,” Zhen said via messages. “I attended Kode with Klossy during the summer and during one of our sessions everyone shared their unfortunate stories as young women in stem with people actively being discouraged from pursuing their passions, and it really shook me because you hear these stories now and then, especially in the news, about the gender disparities in STEM fields. But to directly hear these stories from friends, rather than the usual facts and statistics, was heartbreaking and I felt inspired to use the platform that social media provides to fight for young women.”

Along with interviewing professionals in the field, Sisters of STEM regularly presents informational posts about career opportunities for women in STEM.

“As a young girl pursuing the medical field, I have witnessed and heard about the tragic experiences of bright women not receiving opportunities they deserve,” Director of Strategy, senior Arushi Sinha said via messages. “I have always enjoyed interviewing professionals and hearing their perspectives. With this organization, we wanted to give our members a chance to learn about the various experiences – good and bad – that women in the STEM field have gone through. It has been great to learn and grow as we reach out and educate our members.”

Through Sisters of STEM’s Career Spotlight series, the organization has highlighted women in occupations such as Urban Anthropology, Molecular Biologist, and ICU nursing. Sisters of STEM continues to use their platform to reach hundreds of students by sending out infographics like “Building a Resume 101” and “Notable Figures in STEM.”

“We noticed the majority of students entering STEM fields would transfer to the humanities by their sophomore year of college due to a lack of “empathy” in scientific fields,” Director of Outreach, Glorybelle Barrios said via messages. “Students want to have an impact in their respective careers and feel that such can only be fulfilled by entering politics or law. In order to expose the intersection between stem and the interpersonal nature of the humanities, we began interviewing stem professionals to ask questions about how their careers relate to societal issues!”