Six months and 21 profiles later, we’ve interviewed coders who provide free computer programming education to women; oncologists who make cervical cancer screenings more accessible worldwide; data scientists who bring awareness to trans-exclusionary bias in our data; AI geniuses who double as advocates for other mothers in tech; biologists who spend weeks in the company of giant cats or wildfires; information technologists who create pipelines to STEM careers for the undocumented. Their careers are as varied as they are inspiring, the stories of how they got there often more so.
Above all, it is clear that we have only scratched the surface. Research institutions, industry, academia, government, corporate America and the media have far to go before the STEM fields resemble the makeup of the country. But for a brief moment, it’s worth revisiting each of these 21 remarkable people, listening to them again on their own terms and imagining how the faces of STEM might look like next year, or the year after that.
Crosscut's “I Am STEM” profiles included, left to right, starting from top row, Eric Nealy, Crystal C. Hall, Corrie Ortega, Rahul Banerjee, Os Keyes, Tracie Delgado, Morris Johnson, Clint Robins, Maia Bellon, Abigail Echo-Hawk, Bish Paul and Tarika Powell (Photo by Dorothy Edwards/Crosscut).
