Thousands of girls explore STEM at Girls & Science Kickoff Event

By Libby Smith

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    DENVER, Colorado (KCNC) — About 3,000 girls and their family members descended on the Museum of Nature & Science Friday for the kickoff of Girls & Science. Dozens of businesses, organizations and agencies showed off their STEM missions and careers.

“A project where students build various circuits,” said Amanda Rome, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer for Xcel Energy.

True to their mission, Xcel Energy was directing electricity to power lights and fans at their space in the museum.

“We are a company of engineers, scientists, technology professionals,” Rome explained.

The folks from Ping Identity were making buttons with kids’ names encrypted.

“Ping Identity is an identity security company. It’s really important for kids to learn how to protect their identity. A lot of times, you’ll see kids names on their backpacks and their shirts and so we’re teaching them the importance of incripting their name and their identity,” said Cayla Curtis, Product Manager with Ping Identity.

Again this year, the CBS Colorado team demonstrated the magic of the weather green screen. Everyone got a chance to be a meteorologist for a minute.

There were computer games about math, friendship bracelets about DNA and an exercise about kidney filtration.

“I think, one, is that career-wise, they can see what all the options are for them. Like, is this a science career that they might be interested in? And then also, kidneys are important. It’s important to know how they work and why you need to take care of them,” said Katie Swanzy, Group Vice President of Value Based Care at DaVita.

Exploring careers and gaining confidence in science, technology, engineering and math, STEM fields is what Girls & Science is all about.

“We need all kinds of people out there in the community starting very young, building these skills because we’re going to need them, ” Rome explained.

These girls are building skills and having some fun along the way.

The Girls & Science experiences continue at the Girls & Science takeover of 2nd Saturday at the CSU Spur in Denver. There will be fun STEM related activities from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

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