Unknown

>> Hello! Oh my gosh, I am so excited to be with you all here today. I am going to talk to you about something that is often discussed secretly, and whisper networks of group chats between women in my field, something that is well known but not often discussed publicly for fear that it might harm our chances in a field that for many of us, it's well already an uphill battle in. And that is the barriers that exist for women in Stem science, technology, engineering and mathematics in television, basically, where the heck are all the female?

Bill Nye's right. It's not because there haven't been highly talented women in science who are just as talented creatively as Bill Nye. There is another reason, and I want to talk to you about that today. My name is Emily Calandrelli. I have four degrees in engineering and technology, two of which are from MIT. And I'm also an Emmy nominated science TV show host. For the last ten years, I have been working as a host and producer in this field. And so in many ways, I feel like I have my feet in both worlds science and

Hollywood, more specifically, science. Hollywood. Ten years ago, when I became the host of Exploration Outer Space on Fox, I became the first woman in the United States with a national science show. And I would like to stand here before you today and tell you, ten years later, the field has dramatically changed that. The glass ceiling was shattered, and now we have dozens of female Bill Nye's on every major network, educating each and every one of us in different ways, with their own little personality on different topics. But no, sadly that is not the case. And

today I want to tell you one of the reasons why that is. But first, to give you an overview of who I am. For those of you who may not know, I'm a science communicator, which means I commute. I communicate science on various different platforms and mediums, and starting in the bottom left, most people know me from my Netflix show Emily's Wonder Lab, which is a science show for kids where I do lots of science experiments. I am also a correspondent for Bill Nye on his Netflix show, Bill Nye Saves the World. Very modest title,

and I'm the host and executive producer of Exploration Outer Space on Fox, which has been running and on the air for ten years and is an Emmy winning show. Thank you. I'm also the author of nine different children's science books. I have 3.5 million followers across my social media, where I am known as the Space Gal. And just last year, I finally lived up to my handle when I went to space myself, becoming the 100th woman to fly to space. Now thank you. Every once in a while, I remembered that I have a policy degree

from MIT and leverage that to advocate for women. For example, a few years ago I started a campaign in the aerospace industry when I learned that aerospace companies have pretty abysmal maternity and paternity leave policies. That campaign resulted in more than ten of our top aerospace companies in the world improving their parental leave policies. Thank you. And then more recently, I helped write a bill to protect breastfeeding mothers who are traveling through TSA after having a negative experience as a breastfeeding mother traveling through TSA, and so identifying inefficiencies in fields and areas where women are

often an afterthought is a bit of a hobby of mine, which is perhaps what led me to this stage to talk to you fine people about this topic today. But to start from the beginning, I was born in Morgantown, West Virginia. Oh, do we have people from Morgantown, West Virginia? Hell yeah. Like my parents and their parents and their parents and all of my cousins. And this fine person in the audience and everybody I had ever known. My mom was a secretary. My dad worked for a coal company. But as a kid, man, I had

dreams of a bigger, bolder, more adventurous life. And I thought that being a smart kid. Being the smartest kid in the room was my ticket to that adventurous life. But there was a group of smart kids at my school. These were the kids who had parents who were engineers and scientists. They had PhDs in their genes, and my genes were from Goodwill and Walmart. I was not one of these kids. I did not belong. But in fourth grade, I got my shot to join them to become one of them. This was when they administered the

smart kid test. I'm sure it was called something different, but that's what we called it. This was when they administered the the test for the Accelerated Program for Gifted Students. And boy, do I remember that day vividly. I remember sitting in that tall, that small testing room, answering one question, question after another. And I was doing okay for a while until they got to the question, what is the difference between a microscope and a telescope? And I didn't know. I didn't know any scientists or engineers growing up. I had never used either of those instruments

in class, and they both sounded so similar. But which scope scoped what I didn't know, I was stumped, I freaked out, I panicked, I started crying, and I failed the test. And I never did test into the smart kid classes. In fact, I had a middle school science teacher recommend that I would not be a good fit for honors science. In high school, I didn't listen to her, and a few years later, I'm graduating at the top of my class from West Virginia University with a 4.0 majoring in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and headed to

arguably the best engineering school in the world, Getting a master's in Policy and Aeronautics and Astronautics. Engineering. Not bad for a ten year old who didn't know what a telescope was. But how did that happen? How did I go from A to Z? Well, I would argue that I finally found an opportunity to apply the drive that I had all along, and a sense of belonging along the way. I always had drive. I was always a diligent learner and a hard worker, but I didn't have a lot of opportunities to learn stuff outside the classroom.

And so when the Smart Kid test asked me something that we didn't learn in class, I didn't know it. But when I got to college, I found a sense of belonging with the female engineers, of which there were not many. But we all became very close in my classroom and then also my professors became mentors, introducing me to opportunities that I would have never otherwise learned about. And I think in life, to be successful, you need these three things drive and opportunity to apply it, and a sense of belonging, which is so incredibly crucial because

without it, the first two won't be enough. It won't be enough. I felt like for me, I've always had drive, I always had the battery pack, I always had that. But I never knew how to attach that battery pack to anything that would propel me forward. And in college, I finally found a way to connect it to a rocket that excelled and propelled my dreams. Now, rockets don't use battery packs. It's not the most perfect analogy, but I think, you know what I'm saying is that drive can be found everywhere, but opportunities are often elusive

and unevenly distributed, in a sense of belonging. Well, that's the trickiest of them all. Especially if you do not look like the people in the rooms that you occupy. But I think representation in media contributes to that. It tells those people that they belong in those fields. And before I move on, I want to answer two questions that I often get. One is, if I didn't know any scientists or engineers, how did I go into engineering myself? How did I become one of those? The small statistic of the 13% of aerospace engineers that are women.

And two. How did I go from engineering to television? Well, the answer to the first question is fairly practical, and it has to do with the fact that both of my parents grew up poor, my dad in abject poverty. He was the youngest of four kids to a single mom. They didn't own a home or a car, and they often wondered where their next meal would come from. But both my mom and my dad worked really hard to bring my family where I grew up to middle class, to the importance of financial security. Essentially, the

idea that don't let money be your greatest source of anxiety. Essentially the idea that whoever said money doesn't buy happiness had never been poor. And so when I was a high school senior, I googled all of the majors that one could major in in college. And I looked at their starting salaries, and that is how I chose to go into engineering. I thought, I'm going to hate this. This is going to suck. It's going to be hard and boring, but I'm going to end up with a good job in the end and make my family

proud. But two things happened when I got there. One is that I discovered that I loved it, that there was discovery and awe and adventure, and I was able to do things like float weightless on NASA's Vomit Comet aircraft doing microgravity research. There was adventure in it. Yes, there was grit, but there was also glory. And two, that I was good at it. I didn't see anybody like myself in these fields. I didn't know that I would be good at it, but I was good at it. So good that I landed myself at MIT, and

I was in these commercials talking about science and engineering. And because of all of those commercials and media, I was called by a production company when I was graduating from MIT, asking me if I wanted to be the host of a new show called Xploration Outer Space. And boy, did this sound like an adventure. They said, you are going to be able to go to every NASA center, every private space company, every university, and talk to the top scientists and engineers in the world and ask them any question you want about the top space programs

happening today. But here's the catch. You're going to make about a third of what all of your engineering counterparts are going to be making. And so my two goals at the time came to a head adventure and making gobs and gobs of money. And so I had to choose. And ultimately I ended up with adventure. And I'm so glad that I did, because unbeknownst to me at the time. But by saying yes, I became the first woman with a national science show in the United States. And I don't think thank you. I don't think I

really knew the impact that that would have. But the impact was immediate. We would receive messages from families who watch the show that told us not just that they were fans of the show, but that they were grateful for the show because it was the first time their daughters had seen a female Bill Nye on their TV screen, and all of a sudden there were daughters all over the country that thought, maybe I want to do that. Maybe I want to be a scientist or an engineer. And that transformed the adventure into a mission, because

now there was value behind the work that I was doing. I was becoming the role model that I needed as a kid. And boy, did that feel like magic. That felt like magic. And that became my new North Star. I wanted to create more of that magic. And so I started writing science books with little girls in mind, little girls as the main character. I started doing more TV shows and talks just like this one, but what I really wanted to do was supersize the impact that I was seeing with Xploration outer space. And so

what we started doing was pitching science shows to major science networks. Because here's the thing Xploration outer space is great. I love that show, but it's an educational show on Saturday mornings in the United States. Its reach is limited. I wanted something on a major network that had world wide impact that could bring our work to the masses, and so we pitched every major network with science show ideas, and the feedback we got was relatively the same. It was, well, the vast majority of the people who watch our network, who watch our network are men.

and, well, we just don't know if they'll relate well to a solo female host. And in one particular meeting they asked, we love the show. Oh, we love you, but do you have a boyfriend or something who could co-host the show with you? Not. Not. Do you also know a guy who has four degrees in engineering and went to MIT, and also so happens to be an Emmy nominated host? No. Do you know a general male blob you could set beside you to make you a little bit more palatable to our audience? And in a

different meeting, I was talking to a producer who was working on a really big space show for a major network that already had a male host attached to it, and he was trying to get a female co-host to bring in female viewers, and he was fighting the network on this. And the network said, absolutely not. We will not accept a female co-host unless that woman is an astronaut. And I thought, oh, was the male presenter an astronaut? Because that would make sense. You would want some parity there. What do you think the answer to that

was? He wasn't even a science presenter, had never worked on science or space shows, wasn't a scientist or engineer himself. But no, he was just a general male presenter. And so in science Hollywood, you have the same merit as a general male presenter. A woman must be an astronaut. This happened a few years ago, and now that I've met that bar, I suspect that if this happened today, they would find a way to move that bar even higher. Now, to drive this point home, I want to introduce to you, a commercial from discovery. One of

the leading networks in the science space that was showcasing all of their major science shows at the time. And I want you to tell me if you notice anything. >> All the good love. Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh. Keep it up, world. Yeah. You turn me on. I'm hooked on a feeling. I'm high on believing. That you're in love with me. I said I'm hooked on a feeling. Da da da da da. >> Hmm hmm hmm. What did you notice? So every presenter in there was a man. Except for the one naked

lady running through the woods. And at the end it says the world is ours, which feels just a little bit too on the nose. Don't you think so? When that commercial came out, there was understandably a lot of backlash that they just do they not have any female led shows? Do they not have any women hosts on there, or did they just leave them out? What's the deal? They had a lot of backlash. So now that it's been a few years, let's look at their lineup and see what has changed. Let me know if you

see anything that has changed. So what you'll notice here is that science shows today have become testosterone TV. And I want to be clear in that I'm not saying that 50% of all science shows on all major networks should be hosted and created by women. After all, 50% of scientists and engineers aren't women, but 30% of them are. And according to Nielsen, women watch significantly more TV than men. So why, when we look at over 130 science shows on this network, are only 1% hosted and led by women. And I will also pose the question

that, yes, about 2,930% of scientists and engineers, people working in Stem are women. But what might the number be if growing up? 50% of all science shows on all major networks were hosted and led by women? The challenge is, is that network execs see us as a financial risk. I played around with Midjourney for this presentation, so you'll notice some fun images there. Number one, they have two arguments here. Number one is that they don't believe that their men who currently watch their network will watch women on TV. And number two, they argue that there

simply isn't a female audience for science TV shows. Now, to give a relevant counter example here, I would like to introduce to you hello sunshine. Hello sunshine is Reese Witherspoon's production company. It was her answer to the age old Hollywood wisdom that female led TV shows and films don't sell. After all, for decades we would go to the movies and watch films centered around a male protagonist, often with a one dimensional female character. And I don't know if you have seen her give this speech, but she talks about being exasperated, reading script after script where

there would be a woman and an emergency scenario, and in that emergency scenario, the woman looks to the male protagonist and says, what do we do now? And she says, do you know literally any women in your life that have no idea what to do in an emergency scenario? Like, it's so unrealistic. And so she decided to invest in her own stories written by women. Women written by women. As she says, if you want to change the stories, you must first change the storytellers. And so her production company, Hello Sunshine, is responsible for major hits

like Gone Girl, Big Little Lies, Where the Crawdads Sing, The Morning Show and more. And recently, Hello Sunshine sold for nearly $1 billion, nearly $1 billion of value. where network executives previously saw none at all, none at all. And this wasn't just because of female viewership. I could only find demographic data for a few of their larger hits. But from Big Little Lies, 43% of their audience was men. For Gone Girl, 40% of their audience was male viewers, no small percentage of their overall viewership. So Hello Sunshine just really proved that not only do women

lead TV shows and movies sell, but they can make boatloads of money. Like, this is truly an untapped market and so I don't know if an equivalent. Hello Starshine that invested in women led science stories would be worth $1 billion. But all I'm saying is that I think there's a similar undervaluation happening in our portion of the sector as well. And to give some early indicators of this. I'd love to introduce you to some of my friends. These are women in SIM on YouTube. So this is Simone Yetch. She makes robotics videos with over 2

million subscribers. Dianna Cowern, who's the physics girl, makes really in-depth physics videos for over 3 million subscribers. And of course Cleo Abram, who covers everything about technology, the queen of YouTube, who really purely all of these people only talk about science and technology, and they get millions of viewers every month, which, by the way, is more than some Netflix shows get in an entire year. So I would challenge the notion that one men wouldn't watch female led shows, and two, that there isn't an audience for female led science shows. Now, after years and years and

years of pitching science shows for adults and constantly running up against that wall, we decided to pivot. And instead of pitching science shows for adults, we started pitching science shows for children. And it may come as no surprise, but Hollywood felt a little bit more comfortable with a woman and an authority figure teaching science to children. Right. And so let me tell you, I was still pleasantly surprised when Netflix not only wanted my show Emily's Wonder Lab, but they were totally fine with me filming it. Nine months pregnant. And so now there is a. One

of the most impactful things that I received from a follower was this homework assignment from their son, Gavin. Now, you all might be familiar with this. This is the Draw a scientist homework assignment. It's been around since the 80s and it's given worldwide. And you simply ask a child to draw what they think a scientist looks like. The goal, of course, is to deduce the stereotypes that children have when they think of the word scientist, and for decades, they mostly just drew male scientists. But this boy, Gavin, when he was asked to draw a scientist,

he drew me. He drew pregnant. Me because when he thought of the word scientist, that's what popped into his head. And I think that underscores the importance that not only is representation for women in Stem and female role models important for girls, it's just as important for boys to see this because it changes the way they see girls, their peers and women throughout their life. But of course, after a single season, Emily's Wonder Lab was sadly Cancelled. Why was that? Well, this leads me to the second inefficiency in science Hollywood. And this one isn't specific

to women. A few years back, the children's division of Major Networks made a pivot and started investing most of their budget into animated programs. And it goes back to it being a financial risk, because while animated shows often cost more and take longer to make they seem like a better financial bet in the long run. Why is that? Because you don't have to give a cartoon a raise, and subsequent seasons and cartoons often lend themselves better to toys and products. Now, this transition to everything being animated for children's television creates a couple of different problems,

not the least of which is language development issues. When a child learns to speak from a cartoon Versus a human right. But also it creates a role model gap, because how many of us were inspired to go into science because of Bill Nye, a real engineer? And how many of us were inspired to go into science because of Jimmy Neutron? Like, I'm not saying that representation in cartoons doesn't matter, because it does. I'm a huge fan of Ada twist scientist, for example. But if we want to give children role models that they can follow for

a lifetime, that's going to take real people. I also want to dispel the myth that educational shows like Emily's Wonder Lab are simply a charitable thing to do. Meaning they're not good for business, but they're good for humanity. And therefore we should do them because they're good for both. But at first, that's what we thought. We thought, oh, it's an educational show. It just didn't do well. And that's why it was canceled. That was until a couple of years ago, when Netflix released their very first transparency report, showing all of us how many people watched

each and every program on their platform. And guess what? Emily's Wonder Lab performed in the top 16% of all TV shows and films across the platform worldwide, and in the most recent transparency report, it performed in the top 13% of all TV shows worldwide. To put that into perspective, that's better than seasons eight through 20 of Grey's Anatomy, which Netflix pays a pretty penny to host. That's better than seasons one through five of Black Mirror. But like the Black Mirror, you guys. And then also better than the most recent seasons of The Umbrella Academy. And

I really want to put cost into perspective here, because the Umbrella Academy is not cheap to make and keeps getting renewed. And so I love the Umbrella Academy, by the way. But The Umbrella Academy, according to variety, cost $200,000 per episode per actor. There are seven main actors in the series, so for a ten episode season, that's $14 million. Okay, and remember, this keeps getting renewed. But for a single $14 million season of The Umbrella Academy, we could have had nine more seasons of Emily's Wonder Lab. Okay, this is a show that punches far above

its weight for what it costs. Not only is it good for business, but also, by the way, it happens to be inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers. And yet and yet, the gatekeepers and powers that be in Hollywood are actively choosing against this. So then the question becomes, what do you do when your show is canceled and you still want to have impact? Well, you pivot, you pivot. So I realized that the end goal was was making science more accessible to everybody. There are many paths to doing that. Netflix would have made my

life a whole lot easier by keeping Emily's Wonder Lab, but I didn't need that to have impact. And so what did I do next? I had 100 experiment ideas for 100 new episodes of Emily's Wonder Lab, and I put them all into a book series, the Stay Curious and Keep Exploring book series. And the question became, okay, now we're going to learn. Did people care about the science? And my personality mixed in? Do they care about that or did it just do well? The show just do well because of it being on Netflix, right? Well,

we soon learned that it was the science, right? Because that book series became an instant number one New York Times bestseller. And because of that, I found myself in a very lucky position because, yes, Netflix wasn't renewing my show, but I no longer wanted to be reliant on a network to have the impact that I was hoping to have. And so I used all of the money that I made from the book series, and I invested in a production company to turn every single one of those science experiments into an episode itself, and I called

it Emily's Science Lab. I hired the same composer of Emily's Wonder Lab to make a theme song, and I trademarked Emily's Science Lab. And so now I own and operate this show myself. I launched it on YouTube six months ago. Looks a little bit like this. Science lab I carry out and keep exploring. Emily's. Sounds like Slouched and exploding. It's Perry grip for anybody who knows people in musical television. He's very talented. And so six months after that show came out, it now has over 130,000 subscribers, which I consider as a really good, hopeful sign

for the future. And I'm really excited for the possibilities of Emily's Science Lab on YouTube and the possibility of education on YouTube as a whole. But still, that's a fraction of the reach and therefore impact that a show on Netflix would have. But I came to the same conclusion that many of us in this field do, which is if you want to create representation and SIM on media, you're going to have to pay for it yourself. You're going to have to pay for it yourself. And I found myself in various situations where a major platform

will say, sure, we'll host your show on our platform. You've got a great track record of success. The show looks great. We'll host it on our platform, but we're not going to invest in it or help you pay for it like we do a lot of our other shows. So you got to go out and find a different source of funding. So either you pay for it out of pocket like Reese Witherspoon did originally, or a couple of other things I've tried. And this is just me brainstorming with all of you, because I don't have

the right answer here. These are just a couple of the things that I've tried. The first one is finding industry partners, for example, in the aerospace industry, people whose incentive is to have the next generation of scientists and engineers knocking on their door for employment someday. But these are old school systems, and I'm going into an old school system asking them to change their marketing and recruitment budget and invest it in this hot, new, cool way. And I'm not sure if you've ever tried to change an old school system. It's not as easy as you

think. The second strategy that I'm currently employing is approaching foundation partners. So essentially wealthy people who set up foundations to move their charitable investments around. And a lot of these foundations have a goal of increasing Stem outreach. And so this one, it's a TBD. I'm not sure how fruitful this one will be. I'll have to report back to you. I'm really excited about that one, but we'll see about that one. The other thing I think that we should mention is the societal context in which all of this is happening, the first of which is that

there are diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives being cut everywhere, being cut everywhere, because somehow we got the idea that we've been investing too much and these support systems that have helped these traditionally marginalized communities. And I'll say, when I see 1% of all the science shows on discovery hosted and led by women, it certainly doesn't seem obvious to me that we've been overinvesting in this sector. But it also makes me question when I ask people for funding for this project, will this be considered a Dei initiative that they are afraid to invest in for fear

that they will lose federal funding? Because it's not just government agencies that are cutting it, it's corporations and its foundation partners that are cutting their Dei initiatives. Am I considered Dei simply because I'm a woman? I don't know. The second thing is the rise in Christian nationalism. There was a report out of the New York Times that showed that nearly We, 50% of Republican men think that women should return to traditional roles, meaning stay. Yeah. Boo. Not a fan of that opinion. Um, should stay in the home. But it's not just that, right? We all

have our eyes wide open. It's that they should be required to do that. Right? And so my question is, how does this impact whether or not we choose to highlight women in science, in media and in television, in Hollywood, and these generally all male rooms where these decisions are being made, on which TV shows to invest in, which line do those men stand on now, finally, I want to drive the point home that this lack of representation of women in Stem in media, this lack of support for women in science in general, isn't just a

women's issue, it's an all of us issue, because when you don't have women in the lab, at the table behind the computer, in the design, inefficiencies arise. So I'm going to name a few here. The first of which is, have you ever been in an office that felt just a little bit too cold? Well, it might be because the standard office temperature was based off of the metabolic resting rate of the average man. And so today, HVAC professionals use something that is based off of the body of an average man in our five degrees too

cold for the average woman. And so in many workplaces, you have people who aren't as productive as they could be, or you just have a slew of women with space heaters under their desk with the AC blasting, and it's wasting resources and electricity for all of us. The second example, have you ever waited in a long line in the women's restroom and noticed that there was absolutely no line in the men's? There's a reason for that. When male engineers, when male engineers, when engineers and architects. Freudian slip, when engineers and architects, often male dominated fields,

are designing restrooms and designing spaces for restrooms, they often allocate the same amount of space for both, which seems fair, but let's take a closer look. And male restrooms. You have both stalls and urinals so more people can relieve themselves and the same amount of space. In women's restrooms you have. The majority of the elderly and disabled are women. They need a little bit more time in the restroom. Children are more likely to accompany who women mom in the restroom, which is perhaps a different issue for a different talk, but still is relevant here. And

at certain times of the month, women need a little bit more time as well. So is it really fair that we allocate the same amount of space for both men and women's restrooms. How might these spaces look? That's right. If more women were in the room when they were designed, what is equal is not always equitable. And finally, there's car crashes. So women are 70% more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash. And no, it's not because women are bad drivers. Men engage in riskier driving practices and get into more accidents than women.

So this statistic is referring to very similar accidents. So in similar accidents, women are 70% more likely to be seriously injured than men. Why is that? Because we use male car crash dummies and car crash safety tests. It wasn't even until two years ago that we introduced a female test dummy to these car crash safety tests. We'll have to wait on pins and needles to see if that Dei initiative is cancelled. And finally, there's the pharmaceutical industry. So a study out of UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago looked at 86 different FDA medications and

found that women were twice as likely to experience adverse drug effects. Why is this? Well, it's because for decades, women were excluded from clinical drug trials for the reason that female hormone fluctuations rendered them difficult to study. So many things, including the dosages of these drugs, are based on the average male body. And so you can see, when we don't involve women in the design of various science and technology things, we find inefficiencies that arise. It comes at a cost. Our time, our money, and our lives. These examples, by the way, are from Invisible Women,

which I highly recommend. I feel like this changed my brain chemistry on all of this. It's a great book. Now, the last example that I want to give to you is one from my own industry, the aerospace industry. Last year, I and a lot of the other leaders, CEOs and marketing professionals in the aerospace industry were all called to Washington, D.C., to the white House to discuss a huge problem. We were having a recruitment problem because in the aerospace industry, we're aging, which means people are retiring faster than we can recruit people to replace them.

We have a marketing problem. How do we market the aerospace industry better to young people? How do we market the aerospace industry better to women who only make up 13% of all aerospace engineers. This becomes a problem for all of us. It's an economic problem for all of us. And would representation of women in Stem in media? The lack of it? Does the lack of it contribute to this? Possibly. Would increasing the representation of women in Stem in media help benefit this? Possibly. I'm not saying that putting more women in Stem on TV will be

a silver bullet to solve all of our problems, because it wouldn't. But it is a very powerful tool in our tool belt that those currently in power are actively choosing not to use. So the example, the positive example I will leave you with here today is that hello Sunshine found a way to solve this inefficiency and create incredible representation for women in Stem. And also, by the way, just so happened to make a whole lot of money in the process. So who out there wants to be the hello Starshine for science? Thank you all so

much. Thank you. So. I know. Thank you guys. I know that I'm going to be able to answer a few questions here. We have about 15 minutes for questions. But I'm not going to be able to get to all of them. This is a Google form where you can leave me feedback and comments. And I'm a feedback is a gift type of person, so please feel free to use that. But I see the Slido here, so I'm happy to start answering questions here. How does your work and advocacy. Yeah. So how does my work in

advocacy advocacy support the inclusion of women of color in Stem? So I will say that everything I said here, it is worse if you are at the intersection of multiple marginalized communities, and especially for women of color, this problem becomes remarkably harder, right? Remarkably harder because they see you and they think, oh, you're you're not just a white woman, you're a black woman. That is that is even more niche. We don't think they would like to see you on television. And my black friends in the industry, they have told them as such, like, it's it's

funny to me because this isn't a secret. They aren't trying to hide it with flowery language. They tell it to you, to your face, which I give them credit for, I suppose. But for me personally, something that I can do is, for example, on Xploration outer space, I get to choose which experts I platform, which scientists and engineers we put on our TV show and show the world. And so we make it one of our goals to make our show as diverse as possible. And one of my favorite pieces of feedback that we received recently

was someone very angry with us on Twitter, saying that there weren't enough white men in our show. And to be clear, we still have and we track this. So this is something I would recommend if you're trying to do this. Track it because it holds you accountable. You can see it visually, whether or not you are maintaining the standard that you hope to exemplify. And with us, we have still about 50% of our show is white men because, well, we work in the aerospace industry and like 86% of the people in the aerospace industry are

white men, especially when you get to the top. Right. So you really have to do your research and find those people in the aerospace industry to platform. It's possible. It's not impossible, but you can do the work to do that. And so anyways, that's one of the ways that we have been trying to leverage the platform that we have to showcase voices of color. If I could give myself one piece of advice or no, if you could give one piece of advice to a young girl, what would you say? Um. Let's see. I mean, I

think it all has to do with failure. As girls, we are often taught that our intelligence is binary. We attribute our smartness to the outcomes. Like if we get a good grade on a test, we're smart. If we don't, we are no longer smart. It feels like very binary. Um, Carol Dweck out of Stanford, I believe, has the growth mindset, and she speaks to this really eloquently where she talks about it has to do with the way that we praise girls and boys differently. We often praise girls for being smart and doing well, but we

praise boys for working hard. We praise them on the process of getting to the outcome, whereas we praise the girls on the outcome itself. And so when you don't get the outcome you want, you think that you're no longer smart. But boys, it's it's it's hard to replicate getting something right or wrong. It's easier to replicate working hard. And so I would challenge little girls to focus on the hard work in between and not not hyper focus on the outcome. Because I think that relationship with failure is key to success. The people I know that

have succeeded the most have failed more. One of my favorite things about myself is my relationship with failure. I've gotten like really good at become besties with failure and I'm no longer afraid of it. I chase really hard things and fail quite often, but I've learned that the more you fail, the closer you get to success. So I would tell them to get a really good relationship with failure. Let's see if I had full creative control over a new Stem media project with a female host, what elements would you prioritize to ensure its success? So

this is something I talked to in that DC event, that meeting of the minds. I'm saying the way that we are advertising science is not conducive to getting new audiences, particularly female audiences and audience of audiences of color, because research has shown that women and minority groups more highly value altruism when it comes to deciding what they want to do in life they care about. Like, what good does this do for others? For the world? But when I look at the Science and Discovery Channel science shows, all I see are like boom, explosions and cool

macho wild testosterone like booyah, Elon Musk. And I think if we want to attract more women, we need to approach science with a bit more empathy. One of the science shows that I was really excited to to pitch was one about a changing world, where we talk about how climate change is affecting people right now, and we focus on the people, the stories, rather than the science itself. It felt like Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown, where you look at people through the lens of food, but instead we would look at people through the lens of a

changing world, and we would talk about how people in vineyards are having to work with new varietals that work under this changing climate. Or people up north are having this new lobster war with Canada, because lobsters are moving farther north to find colder waters. I'm from West Virginia, which is number one in the entire state when it comes to the fewest percentage of people that believe that global warming is happening. And I want to go back to my home state and talk to those people about why that is. Because, spoiler alert it's not that they

simply don't understand the science of climate change. My dad worked for a coal company growing up, and as the coal industry started to decline, he and a lot of other people in the industry lost their jobs. And that lost their livelihoods as well, because that created this whole new issue where West Virginia is number one when it comes to highest rate of poverty, highest rate of obesity, obesity, highest rate of opioid overdoses, there's a whole lot more going on than simply people not understanding the science, because those people are told that being environmentally friendly isn't

friendly to them. And so it's an economic issue, not a scientific one. But we wouldn't understand those nuances unless we go to the community and talk to the people struggling there, because they do not have the bandwidth to care about something so big as climate change because they're worried about putting food on their table. Right. And I wanted to create a show like that where we focus on the people and the empathy. And I think shows like that versus the testosterone TV would attract a different type of audience. So that's the stuff that I would

like to see. Let's see. I love Cleo Abram. I'm wondering how you feel about journalists presenters in this space as opposed to credentialed scientists. Do we take what we can get? Huh? That is a good question. I mean, I would say that there are not that many scientists and engineers that are trained and being professional communicators. And so it can be difficult for professionally trained scientists and engineers to do those same jobs as well. And I will say people like Cleo Abram and Everyday Astronaut and some of these other people who don't have a Stem

background. They are the best science communicators that I have ever met. They are so smart and talented. And I would argue you don't need a science or engineering background to do the work that they are doing. I would say it's probably easier to do that work, but oh my gosh, if you watch their stuff, it is so in-depth. And so yeah, I don't I don't feel any particular way about it because the people that I've seen that do it are just so highly talented. I do see some infighting of people who have science and engineering

degrees, who feel some sort of way about it, because I think if you did get a science and engineering degree, you know how grueling that was to do. And so to see somebody else talking about science, it can feel like, well, that's not fair. I spent 12 hours in a library every single night to learn this stuff, So I sort of see where the point is coming from, but I just know some incredibly talented people in this space that do a wonderful job. Let's see. My daughter wants to be a teacher. People tell her all

the time she should be in a Stem field and teaching is a waste. Oh my gosh, sometimes I don't know what the question is until I read it. Um, and advice to to balance on both sides. Um, I would say that teaching is one of the most powerful things that that somebody can do. Um, my brother, my brother is a high school math teacher. My aunt is a teacher. My, my, I have other aunts that work in education. Like the value of education, especially now, cannot be understated. Understated. And teachers today, like they are doing,

they are doing the Lord's work. Like it is such a hard profession to be on. There is so much attacks on so many attacks on education now more than ever. And so God, the more good people that we can get into education, the better. And so I would say that I wouldn't discount their love of teaching because, good God, we need more people in that field. But I would also say there's an interesting context here where college education has become so darn expensive that there I forget where I was reading this, but now one of

the only statistical good bets to make so that you don't live in debt for the rest of your life is to choose a Stem major. There's like a monetary aspect of it. And I think we're going to have to solve that problem if we want to see good teachers choosing the education profession. Let's see. As a Girl Scout leader of Daisy girls, two of which want to be an astronaut, how can I foster and cultivate their love of science and curiosity in today's society. I think the most powerful thing you can do is introduce them

to role models in various mediums who resonate with them, whether it be their personality or the way they look or where they come from, how they speak, what language they speak. I think that can be one of the most powerful tools that you have. YouTube. There are so many good educators on YouTube and in books and social media as well. I mean, I know so many good science communicators on TikTok and on Facebook, on Instagram, and there's a lot of concern about social media and kids, and I don't want to jump into that. That's a

whole thing. But there really there's a lot of really good content on there. Um, let's see. Oh, what are your thoughts on the 37% of women who unfortunately agree with those Republican men? What can the rest of us do? Um, I will say, for the system to work, one must have the Aunt Lydia's of the world. And so it doesn't surprise me. I mean, there were women who fought against the suffrage movement, right? So we've seen this before. It's not it's not a new thing. But a lot of times I think white women will hold

on to their whiteness more than they will hold on to their womanhood. And there's a lot of competing privileges at play there. And what can the rest of us do? I think speaking out and recognizing the trend in the first place. Um, one thing that happened at one of my my alma mater, one of my universities that I went to, they were canceling Women's History Month. One of the employers there had reached out and told me that this was happening, and that they were going to cancel their Women in Science speaker series and all of

it. And so I leveraged my platform because I feel very lucky to have 3.5 million people following me. And what good are all those followers if we're not going to do something with that to create positive change. And so I posted about it. It made the news, and within 24 hours, a spokesperson from the university clarified that they're not canceling Women's History Month. They never were. And so I will say, uh, resist where you feel safe to do so, because not everybody is in a position to do so. Um, and don't comply in advance. The

other thing that's happening in the aerospace industry is because of the anti die order, there have been a few companies that have completely eliminated all employee resources groups. So these are like the women's resources groups, the black employee resources group, the LGBTQ plus resources groups. They've eliminated all of them, including the team's list, like the internal email listservs of these. And I was giving a talk at an all engineering college, and a few engineers came up to me afterwards who were alumni and are currently working in the field. Two of them worked at Lockheed and

they said, Emily, it's awful. They they cancelled our women's group. They cancelled the email listserv. We can't even communicate with each other anymore. And there was another person from a different company which I will not name to not point them out, but they were like, we didn't do that. Come work at our company. We didn't do that. And so what we're seeing is that there are a few government, they're all government contractors. They're all in the same position where they rely on government contracts for their livelihood, for their business. But some people are complying in

advance and doing more than what they were asked, because they either don't think the support systems are necessary, or they just want to be totally sure that they're not doing anything that could be seen as equitable. And some people are not. And so I think to the leaders in the room, I will say everybody's put in a tough position. It is not our it's the administrator's fault, that, um, administration's fault that we are put in this position. Um, people rely on these government contracts but don't comply in advance. Not everybody is complying in advance. And

so that's the thing. I will leave you with everybody. Thank you so much. It was nice to talk to you. Oh, and I have a book signing. I have a book signing at 1130 I think. So for those of you who are coming to that, I'll see you there.