When I first started my career as an engineer, I worked at a biotechnology company in the Biomaterials Department as a Research and Development Engineer.  I helped develop hydrogel polymers that could be implanted in the body after surgery to help wound healing and prevent adhesions from forming as the tissue healed.  These hydrogels could also be used to deliver drugs to a targeted location in the body.  I also worked for a small biotech company that made wound care materials for veterinary uses.  When I started, the company was growing and needed to increase synthesis of our wound healing hydrogel so I was in charge of the scale up and testing of several products.  

Currently, I am the founder of a nonprofit organization called STEM Like a Girl.  Our mission is to inspire young girls to build excitement and confidence in STEM activities.  Despite efforts to get more girls and women into STEM fields, women still hold only 24% of STEM jobs in the US.  Studies show that girls as young as middle school are self-selecting out of science and math classes.  STEM Like a Girl works with elementary-age girls to introduce them to STEM activities and help them discover their STEM identity at an early age.  Our Parent-Daughter workshops provide hands-on STEM activities for girls and their parents as well as allow the girls to meet and talk to female STEM professionals to learn about what they do as scientists and engineers.  We believe that everyone can STEM Like a Girl!

When I was in high school, I really liked math and science.  All my teachers told me to either be a doctor or a science teacher so I went to college as a pre-med major.  I quickly realized that I didn't want to go to medical school and one of my professors asked if I ever considered engineering.  It was at that point that my love of engineering was born.  I loved everything about engineering: getting a problem and trying to come up with solutions, working in teams, improving on things so they worked better or more efficiently.  In my career as a biomedical engineer, I loved that I could help patients and doctors by creating new devices or making something that didn't work well work better.  As the founder of STEM Like a Girl, I love that I can help educate the next generation of scientist and engineers.

I got my undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell University and my master's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University

When I worked in the biotech field, my days were spent mostly in the lab testing the hydrogels to determine which performed best and met the needs of the patients.  Now I spend my days planning STEM Like a Girl workshops which includes testing out different projects and activities.  I love that my job involves making oobleck, binary code bracelets, and prosthetic arms out of straws and clips - its so fun!

The best part about being an engineer is solving problems.  Most of the time, the solution doesn't come easily and there are a lot of "failures" that come first. But if you don't see them as failures and instead ask what you can learn from each attempt, you can come up with even better solutions!