Imagine being a young female with a lot of great ideas for starting up a company and you cannot get someone to listen to you because of who you are-a female. Enter TechGirl, whose mission it is to connect those young females, those technology entrepreneurs, with a network of specialty advisers and mentorships to help them launch their start-up companies. Its founder, Jennifer DeReyes, shared a story about how her passion for this company was formed. She was at an IBM conference with her 8 year old daughter and upon being asked what she noticed about the room filled with 20,000 people, her daughter replied "Where are the women? I see all men." TechGirl wants to change that gender gap.
They have a network of internal resources that include advisers in finance, marketing, and development who are looking for girls who have the biggest and brightest ideas to help to bring them into the STEM Pipeline. The best way is to get them early, as young as elementary school and expose them to STEM and into the pipeline and then into the Incubation Lab that they can successfully launch their product. During this process they work with advisers and mentors in finance and marketing for about a year to help bring their product or service to fruition. In doing this, they will come out on the other end ready to manage a company, a benefit not available without TechGirl. You can be a mentor or a mentee.
This service is based in Philadelphia and California. The app will launch in November 2017.
Scott is a developer who has worked on projects of varying sizes, including all of the PLUGHITZ Corporation properties. He is also known in the gaming world for his time supporting the rhythm game community, through DDRLover and hosting tournaments throughout the Tampa Bay Area. Currently, when he is not working on software projects or hosting F5 Live: Refreshing Technology, Scott can often be found returning to his high school days working with the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), mentoring teams and helping with ROBOTICON Tampa Bay. He has also helped found a student software learning group, the ASCII Warriors, currently housed at AMRoC Fab Lab.
Daniele is a student at Florida Polytechnic University who is studying Computer Science with a concentration in Cyber Security. In High School, she was introduced to the science and technology world through the Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), a robotics foundation where students of varying ages can compete through tasks that their robots perform. With help from mentors she met through FIRST, she became interested in programming and developing. Today, Daniele is a special events host for F5 Live: Refreshing Technology and PLuGHiTz Live Special Events and a co-host for both The New Product Launchpad and FIRST Looks.