Ballard High School Presentation, February 11th, 2010

We had a great event at Ballard High Scool today! The turnout was smaller than usual, but the girls were so thrilled to be there and meet the presenters. We had 5 presenters and 3 were brand new to the IGNITE experience. The word awesome is an understatement to describe the new IGNITE mentors. Extraordinary, fantastic, real, and passionate would come close and words do not really describe the experience of witnessing passionate mentors sharing their story and wanting to connect with girls and inspire them. I wish you all could have been there. It was special. Thank you to Nora Duffy, a longtime IGNITE volunteer who is always there when I need her. She says yes every time. And she inspires girls to dream big and consider the amazing opportunities that exist in technology companies today. Thank you Nora. Thank you to Gina Nakamura, Outreach Coordinator Seattle Central Community College. Gina also has her technology degrees and wanted to be working with students as her career. She is also the guru of scholarships and grants to go to college. She gives them the message that there is always a way to go to college. She did it completely on grants and scholarships so she knows what she is talking about. Thank you Gina!! Thank you to Lilia Gutnik, Program Manager, Microsoft and Brand New IGNITE member. Wow, Lilia, great job. Lilia values being real and connecting with girls on how great her career is and how fabulous the opportunities are. It would be hard to not get it when Lilia tells girls about it. Lilia you are awesome, and a big welcome to IGNITE. I hope you are with us for a very long time. Thank you to Jennifer Reimann, Marketing, Program Manager, Microsoft. Another amazing new volunteer, Wow again. Thank you Jennifer, for connecting to the girls and being so passionate about that. You are amazing and we are so fortunate to have you. You love what you do and want girls to have these opportunities and that came across very clearly. Thank you to Kate Cumming, Electrical Engineer, Synapse Product Development. Martine, a long time volunteer for IGNITE, invited Kate. They both work at Synapse. Thank you Martine, for inviting Kate. Kate did a great job telling girls all about the engineering careers and choices that are involved,. She broke down all the stereotypes that prevent girls from considering careers in engineering. Kate loves her career and made it so exciting and interesting that all girls could see that engineering was not at all what they thought it was. Thank you Kate for your wonderful skills at communicating this very important message to the girls. Thank you to Jill Zawatski, Marketing teacher, and Introduction to computers. Jill is wonderful and does a great job advertising IGNITE. It just so happened that the kids at Ballard have had so many different trips and it was hard on the teachers to let them go to one more thing. We will work on that for next time. It is wonderful to work with Jill, she is awesome. Thank you to Craig Nelson, Project Lead the Way teacher. It is the pre-engineering classes at Ballard and we work so hard to have girls enroll. We talked about that yesterday in the event. I tried hard to encourage the girls to give PLTW a try. So did the presenters. Craig is doing a Robotics club after school and spends every night mentoring kids. There are 5 girls in the Robotics club and most are the Project leaders. Thank you Craig for all you do. Thank you to Sue Higgins, Career Center Specialist. She makes us feel so welcome and her room was set up just for us. Thank you Sue. Thank you to Principal Brockman for always being supportive and wanting to help get young women to this event.