HI All.

We had a fabulous event at Roosevelt HS. We had 65 young women turn out. It was such a spectacular presentation and all around fantastic IGNITE event. Thank you to the wonderful Liz MacLennan, who works so hard to make this happen at Roosevelt and she is such an amazing IGNITE partner. Thank you to the wonderful staff who helps Liz with the recruitment. All of the Roosevelt IGNITE team pulls together to bring off an amazing turn out and an excited group of young women. Thank you to teacher Dan Norton-Middaugh (Web Design Teacher), Nicole Samuels (Marketing), Chris Syrjala (Career Center Specialist), Carl Ruff (Project Lead The Way / Pre-Engineering teacher), all the counselors, Sarah Chapman, and the Principal for making this a welcoming and joyous experience.

Thank you to the women who did the Presentation. You are all so wonderful and special. We had a few new faces and I want to welcome you to the IGNITE TEAM. Dawn Austin (Microsoft - Search Media Operations), who also has a daughter who attends Roosevelt. Your enthusiasm for this presentation was just completely outstanding. And welcome and thank you to Sandra, a Graduate student at the UW. You did a great job! It was great to have a student of Computer Science and Research represented. And thank you to all the volunteers who return time and again to share their interesting and fabulous careers with the young women. You are all so outstanding in your communication with the girls. You break down all those barriers they have in their heads about these kinds of careers and by telling your stories, you make it real to them. I can see the light bulbs going on in their heads while you are speaking to them. Also all the different backgrounds of the women and different jobs was just great.

If you have never attended an IGNITE event, it is really a special treat, and feels like we are creating the magic of real dreams coming true.

Thank you to Martine Worrall (Mechanical Engineer - Synapse), Nancy White (Creating On-Line Community - Full Circle Associates), Allison McCauley, (Senior Systems Consultant - Lenovo), Divya Narayanan (Microsoft, Software Tester), Sandra (Graduate student - UW), Meagen Reardon (University Of Washington, Computer Science and Engineering Dept.), and Barbara Telford (Relationship Manager, ACE Team - Microsoft). You all did such a great job. It was very special.

It is sometimes so hard to describe how much can happen at an IGNITE presentation. When the girls listen to the women, they can hear and see the possibilities for their futures expand and change. I had several young women approach me to talk after the event, and they said "This changed my life! I am so excited there is IGNITE to help me to get where I want to go. This is exactly what I needed." It was so inspiring.

Now here are the comments from the girls evaluation forms, they always say it best.

• The ladies who shared were very informative about their different jobs. It was amazing and exciting, the pink hair lady was ecstatic.
• I loved this event and wish it was longer.
• I liked the women they had good personalities and were modest. It was reassuring to hear what they were like in high school, it gives me hope.
• I enjoyed hearing about peoples personal experiences, and it was interesting to hear women's stories. It covered everything I wanted to hear.
• I liked how you had a lot of people talking to us, instead of boring stuff, this was NOT boring. I learned that I can like a lot of different things and still be successful.
• I loved hearing the women's stories! And they they all came from different backgrounds. I hadn't originally been considering this because I'm not really into math and science. but I learned not all the women were either.
• I liked hearing about everyone's jobs, It made me very interested. I'm very impressed with all of them.
• I love that we got to hear from so many women that work in tech. I can't wait to do a job shadow and go to the office of the Future.
• I liked to hear the struggling stories of successful women. Have more pizza next time.
• I really enjoyed today. It was fun to hear about all the things these women do and what they've been through.
• I loved hearing about all the opportunities and jobs that are available for women in this field. I can't wait to do more IGNITE things.
• I liked hearing everyone's story. I learned that we are underrepresented in technology and engineering.
• The stories were great. I thought it was interesting how the women got into the field. I thought it was interesting that Martine's teacher told her to go back to community college.
• I liked the Engineering because it sounded cool. I am not sure how you can make this event better, it was so interesting and great already. I am interested now in Engineering.
• Their females experience was great.
• I loved hearing about the jobs and how they got there.
• I liked listening to the speakers the best. The most interesting thing I heard today was that technology can help us to change the world. There is not any other information that I had wished we had talked about today. I look forward to the field trip and job shadow.
• My favorite thing was the guests, because they talked about their experience becoming who they are. I think you covered everything that I would want to know. Very interesting jobs at Microsoft.
• I liked listening to the speakers. Their stories were great and made me really interested in their jobs. I thought finding out how people got where they are today was the best part. I love the idea of job shadowing.
• The best part was the new jobs I hadn't known about till today.
• I really like how the people who are very busy come to this event to speak with us and to have the opportunity to job shadow.
• What I liked were the different stories and that is was not boring. Also what was interesting was that some of them did not plan on doing what they do now.
• I liked what they talked about.
• It's good and interesting to listen to women talking about their jobs.
• I liked learning about engineering.
• I really liked how their were various careers shown. Also how you could hear their stories and how they got where they were. I liked hearing how different women got to where they are now.
• I really enjoyed this event!! I liked hearing there were so many jobs doing things that I like. I want to go on the field trip and job shadow day.
• I liked finding out that about people from all different backgrounds.
• I liked the stories of how everyone got started.
• I like the part that you can start the job anytime in the morning and the ladies were great speakers. they told me a lot of things that I didn't know before. I learned a lot. I learned what I needed to do to go into engineering.
• I really liked the guests who told us about their story at today's event.
• Well I like how these ladies inspired me a lot and I might get a degree in engineering.
• Hearing other people's stories inspired me, and how they succeeded on their jobs. It was interesting to hear how far the people advanced in their work.
• I liked all the stories, and the last one was my favorite. She went on a field trip and ended up with a job, Barbara Telford :)
• The event was great, I liked the way you had different women to come and speak.
• I learned about each different kinds of jobs, I also found out that some women didn't like math in high school and ended up with a technical degree.
• I liked it. It's great that you have people coming, don't change anything its perfect.
• Examples of many people getting places in life, even when they did not like high school.
• The most interesting thing was hearing the personal stories and finding out that not every geek looks geeky, (pink Hair)
• My most favorite thing was hearing peoples accomplishments.
• I learned a lot about different kinds of computer jobs. Hearing their stories was the best part.

It was a great event and very successful.

Thank you all for making this possible.

Cathi
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Pictures of the Event