Year in Review: How Booz Allen Strengthened Its Commitment to STEM
Among adults 25 and older employed in STEM jobs, only 9 percent are black and 7 percent Hispanic, according to Pew Research Center. The percentages in engineering are 5 percent black and 8 percent Hispanic.
In 2019, Booz Allen strengthened its commitment to changing those figures and cultivating the next generation of STEM professionals.
Award-winning mentorship
Booz Allen cultivates the next generation of technology leaders through award-winning mentorship. Executive Vice President Tony Mitchell, chosen earlier this year as the Black Engineer of the Year out of more than 10,000 nominees, shared his advice for STEM success with Fast Company:
- Seek varied mentors —for example, a mentor from a different cultural or economic background can challenge your assumptions and expose you to new concepts.
- Keep learning long after getting your degree
- Push yourself—especially to give back to others
A powerful partnership
Booz Allen has partnered with the Black Engineer of the Year Award (BEYA) program since 2005. To date, BEYA has recognized more than 100 Booz Allen employees for their work in the field, including 10 in 2019.
“If we are to change the world, we must rewrite our expectations and change what we tolerate, wanting better for others than we want for ourselves,” said April Young, one of this year’s winners. Young is a social policy impact strategist who applies her background as an anthropologist to direct research for the Centers on Medicare and Medicaid on quality improvement initiatives in hospital facilities serving special populations.
In December, Booz Allen’s San Diego office partnered with synED/Cyber-Guild to host a Girl Scout Jr. Cyber Camp at Moreno Valley College, that included a full day of games, challenges, and activities focused on cybersecurity. After attending this camp, 55 Girl Scouts learned a range of secure cyber practices, and earned their cybersecurity badges.
Collective ingenuity for critical challenges
Also this year, 2,500 teams of data scientists, technologists, and other experts from around the world are hard at work applying their skills to bring more equality and accessibility to early childhood education in the 2019 Data Science Bowl.
The Data Science Bowl is the world’s largest data science competition focused on social good. Over the past four years, more than 50,000 participants have submitted over 114,000 algorithms to improve everything from lung cancer and heart disease to ocean health.
Earlier this month, Booz Allen’s commitment to promoting shared learning and the advancement of STEM led to the first-ever Booz Allen Engineering & Science Technical Conference (“BESTCon”), a full day internal engineering and science conference. BESTCON provided an opportunity for applied scientists and engineers to pool and share their knowledge with colleagues from across the firm’s markets and geographies.
Read more about STEM at Booz Allen.
