(Newser)
– When Alena Wicker realized the racial and gender differences in employment in the STEM camps, she went to work. The 12-year-old Texas boy told his mother, “I want to create this culture of brown girls in STEM, because it’s all that empty and I just want to do something,” Good Morning America reports. In fact, the Pew Research Center has found that only 9% of STEM workers are black and only 7% are Hispanic. The result of Alena’s effort is a website, thebrownstemgirl, for girls of color. Her other efforts include writing a children’s book and starting a podcast, which is a couple of weeks after her debut, which will include “STEM women and girls to ask and answer questions”. He also plans to lead by example.
“I will be the youngest black girl to have worked at NASA,” Alena told her mother. He will begin remote classes at Arizona State University in May as soon as he graduates from high school. Alena plans to double down on astronomical and planetary science and chemistry on her way to becoming an engineer. NASA paid tribute to its first black engineer, Mary Jackson, earlier this year, naming it Washington headquarters. Alena hopes one of her podcast guests will be another pioneer: Mae Jemison, NASA’s first black astronaut. The prodigy is on his way to open land; she and her mother, Daphne McQuarter, said NASA has contacted Alena. (Read more edifying news.)