On Wednesday, January 21st, our school had the privilege of hosting the CEO of Goldieblox, a company creating engineering toys for young girls, Debbie Sterling. She talked a little bit about how she went to engineering school and was one of the very few girls attending the class. The problem with this was that on top of not having the moral support of more girls in a class with you, Debbie was treated unfairly by not only the male students in her class, but the teachers as well (also male). After graduating collage, Debbie realized that the cause of this unfairness was mainly because of the different toys that young girls and boys grew up playing with. She recalled that as a child, she grew up playing with the legos and link ‘n logs that her older brothers had grown up playing with, which is why she was so interested in engineering. For other girls, this was not the case. There is such a gender stereotype around children’s toys; that the young girl wants dolls and a cooking set and the young boy wants trucks and building blocks. Debbie told us how she broke that boundary by making her new toys for girls, and then took the time to talk to our group a little bit more on how she survived collage being one of the only girls there. “At one point, we were drawing blueprints of a certain design and I just couldn’t get the perspective part down. I had worked so hard on this project, so I was proud of it even though it wasn’t much like the other student’s work, and I was still struggling with the perspective drawing. We had pinned our work up on the wall for critiquing, and our professor was coming to look at my work. When he saw it, he laughed and said to the class, ‘Raise your hand if you think Debbie should pass this class’,” Debbie explains. She goes on to talk about how the only way that she survived being in that class was her study group and her determination of passing the class as a whole. She was able to talk to her professors and figure things out, but the idea of being picked on just because she was a girl stuck with her until she quit her job to help young girls that needed inspiration through toys to become engineers. Now, Debbie works with about thirty other people who share her same dream to create a more diverse world of engineers.