On "Introduce a Girl to Engineering" Day, Learn How Booz Allen Is Teaching Girls to Love STEM

Each day, Booz Allen Hamilton empowers people to change the world—but you might not know that many of those people are school-aged girls. In order to address the gender gap in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, where women and minorities remain vastly underrepresented, the firm is committed to introducing girls to engineering concepts and fostering a love of STEM.

Going beyond math and science, Booz Allen leverages advocacy and outreach programs to allow girls to see themselves in engineering or cybersecurity roles. For example, in partnership with the Girl Scouts Nation’s Capital, the firm hosted a launch event of THE IMAGINE IT BOOK: Discover, Create, and Invent our Amazing Future! written by Ellen Sabin, published by Watering Can® Press, and underwritten by Booz Allen. The event guided 2nd and 3rd grade girls through fun, hands-on, STEM-based activities designed to spark a love of innovation. (View a video from the event above, or here.)

As Booz Allen Chief Innovation Officer Susan Penfield said during the event, “Today’s kids are tomorrow’s problem-solvers, inventors, and visionaries, and by encouraging young girls to pursue their passion for science, technology, engineering and math, we are ensuring a strong pipeline of STEM talent.”

While the IMAGINE IT BOOK event focused on introducing younger girls to fun STEM concepts, the firm’s STEM Girls 4 Social Good initiative (SG4SG) targets middle and high school aged girls. The program, a movement of Booz Allen women working to strip away the perception that girls lack an affinity for math, science, and technology, is all about showing girls what is possible.

In efforts to lead by example, Booz Allen has created a culture of inclusivity for women at all levels of the firm. For instance, Meet Laura Croft. Dr. Laura Croft, to be exact. Laura is a senior lead scientist and bioengineer, leading a multi-faceted team of engineers working on biometric recognition and computer vision projects. She’s been at Booz Allen for four years and loves figuring out how to solve problems, “the wackier, the better.” Because of her technical background and her consulting experience, Laura offers something crucial to clients: the power to communicate in both engineering speak and client speak. “Communicating complex, highly technical material to non-technical audiences, allows me to convey complex challenges, how we solve those challenges, and the impact on the clients’ missions.”

One of the projects Laura is most proud of is integrating VAMPIRE (a handheld device used by law enforcement for fingerprint analysis) into the FBI enterprise system so that their agents can deploy and download the VAMPIRE software on their FBI devices. Laura is a graduate of Georgia Tech with a B.S. in biomedical engineering and she earned her Ph.D. at UC-Berkeley in bioengineering. She works in the Booz Allen Westborough, MA office.

To learn more about Laura and Booz Allen’s commitment to girls in engineering roles, click here.