Garfield High School Presentation, October 27th, 2009

Hi All, We had a great event today at Garfield. This group of girls were very interested in IGNITE and being part of all we do. It was a great group. They wanted to ask lots of questions and I wished we had more time. Thank you to all the speakers who attended this event today: Nora Duffy, Intellectual Property. Nora is a long time volunteer who inspires girls to learn about all their career choices in the technology field. She shares her story to show girls that having the motivation to learn about technology careers will pay off for them for so many reasons. Thank you Nora for your continued support of IGNITE and your wonderful presence at the events. Thank you to Martine Worrall, Mechanical Engineer, Synapse Product Development. Martine motivates and inspires girls to learn about all types of engineering careers. She loves her career and her passion to share that with the girls is evident. She covers all types of engineering and helps the girls know that engineering is something they can do. She makes it accessible to them. Thank you Martine for your commitment to the girls. We are so fortunate to have you in IGNITE. Thank you to Corey Weathers. Corey is a new IGNITE volunteer. Welcome Corey. He did such a great job today telling girls about the APEX program he is in at Microsoft. He is in a program that allows him to try a different career choice every six months for 2 years before he chooses one he wants to specialize in. When Corey graduated Howard University in Computer Science, he was recruited by Microsoft and loves his career there. He is now working with Diversity and Mylene Padolina. He goes to talk to young people all over the Puget Sound about technology careers. Mylene sent him our way and I want to thank her so much for helping Corey find us. He is passionate about talking to young people and we are so lucky to have him in IGNITE. He plans on attending many more events for us. Thank you to Christie Ong, IGNITE alumni. Christie just graduated Rochester Institute of Technology and has earned a Fulbright Scholarship. Christie has been in IGNITE since 9th grade! She has been a long time student and now volunteer for IGNITE. Her story is inspiring and now she is back for a while and wants to give back to IGNITE. She also helped girls realize that there is money to be found to go to college. Christie was able to find scholarships and grants, and has no college debt and did it all on her own. She has a great story, and wanted to share with the girls how much IGNITE inspired her and opened doors for her in high school and beyond. She also inspired the Garfield girls today to pursue college no matter what your situation. She is a leader in so many ways. Christie is going to be working with IGNITE for a few more months until she leaves for Italy in January to pursue her Fulbright award. Thank you to Trisha Barker. Trisha just graduated Seattle Central Community College in web design. She has volunteered hundreds of hours building the new IGNITE website. She is coming to all the events to show girls how to use the new website and take advantage of all the resources and events we have to offer them. Trisha has given so much time and energy and is helping bring IGNITE to a whole new level of operation. Thank you Trisha for all your hard work and caring. The website will be revealed in a few short weeks. Thank you to the wonderful teacher at Garfield Helene Martin. Helene is also a great role model for the IGNITE girls. She is teaching computer programming at Garfield where we have 50 percent female enrollment in the Programming class!! And Helene has been a mentor in IGNITE when she attended the UW Computer Science Program and worked with our students at our Engineering Day events. Helene wanted to work with IGNITE and continue her great inspiration as a woman in technology with girls every day. Thank you Helene for all you do. Now here are the comments from the girls’ evaluation forms. They always say it best. *I loved the diversity of the jobs. It was also a very friendly environment. I learned what a mechanical engineer does. I wanted more time. *I liked hearing about the variety of jobs connected to technology and engineering. Especially what specific benefits each job can provide. *I enjoyed hearing about how each of the speakers came to do this kind of work. I think the job shadowing sounds like a really cool way to experiment with different possibilities for later in life. *The pizza! Just kidding. I really enjoyed the guest speakers. They were truly inspirational/funny. I also like how there's a guy in the group. That surprised me but he provides a cool perspective on all this, so it’s all good. *I never knew how much things you can do in the technology field that doesn’t involve direct one-on-one contact with technology, such as intellectual property. This relieves me because I am not tech savvy at all, but I plan to change that soon. This event was already great. It went by so fast. So I wished it was longer. More guests and more time. *I look forward to more IGNITE events, like the one where we get to design video games. *I loved the speakers, the information and the food. I loved hearing about all the opportunities and ways for help, like the lady with no hearing. I want to do some events that prepare me for college. *I loved hearing the variety of stories and backgrounds. It was interesting to hear about the woman who was accepted to Ivy League schools and her parents did not allow her to go. *I enjoyed the variety of speakers that shared their story. It made me learn a lot about technology and how many different fields there are. *What I liked best, was figuring out the different jobs for different degrees. I learned more about getting money for college. *I liked that everyone was very friendly and made everything seem so easy and accessible. I also really like that the careers of the speakers were so varied. Also how many amazingly smart people are involved in this field? I want to do more events. *I learned that there are so many different fields of technology. If I do go to school for technology there will be more available scholarships for me. I want to go to Microsoft. *I felt inspired that I can graduate and not give up. And I learned that I can design anything. I think this event was perfect. I would love to see someone build a computer. *I like how there was multiple speakers that had different aspects of technology. I liked hearing about public relations. It was interesting. *I liked the talking about how they got to their dream jobs. *I learned that women can do anything. *I liked learning about the many different jobs there are in public relations. I heard about this program called IGNITE and that I can be in IGNITE all the way through college and beyond. I am looking forward to the Microsoft field trip, Microsoft internships and DigiGirlz. *What I liked best is the speaker who struggled in math in college and still became an engineer. It is a myth and you have to be a math genius to be successful in that career field. *I really like the slide show that helped me understand the new website. The speakers were very interesting. I thought the event was perfect. *I enjoyed hearing the stories and the thought of being an engineer and going into a technology field was more real to me. I learned about many different fields that you can go into. *I liked the panel discussion learning about the different career fields. It really gave me a better idea of what job I might want to do. I learned more about the jobs at Microsoft for college graduates. *I learned about the job choices. *I liked hearing the in depth job descriptions. I really liked hearing about the Apex program. Thank you all for making this event possible. Sincerely, Cathi