It starts with “belonging”: reflections from the Black Women in STEM 2.0 Summit

On a rainy October day, STEM professionals from across the country convened at the Black Women in STEM 2.0 Summit on the Seattle University campus. Washington STEM’s Career Connect Washington (CCW) Partnerships Manager found that a panel about career readiness was really a conversation about belonging in STEM.

 

Left to right: Tracye Ferguson, Capital ESD 113; Raeshawna Ware, Washington STEM; Therese Williams, Washington Student Achievement Council.

Sometimes, no matter how much you plan ahead, you have to go off-script.

This was the case for Raeshawna Ware, our CCW Partnerships Manager when she attended the Black Women in STEM 2.0 Summit. While speaking on a panel about supporting students moving from high school to career, she got an unexpected question from the audience:

“How can we, as industry leaders, support neurodivergent Black women in STEM?”

Raeshawna recalls her reaction: “I felt grateful in that moment. I was glad someone highlighted how being both neurodivergent and a Black woman is a very specific experience.”

Other audience members immediately spoke up, some citing their own struggles to find acceptance and mentorship in STEM fields. One attendee brought up the common tendency to more readily acknowledge and accommodate neurodivergence — which includes conditions such as autism, ADHD, or OCD — in white men while Black women are not offered the same acceptance.

“That conversation reminded me that there is a myth of Black women being a monolith,” says Raeshawna. “We are connected, but not the same. Even within a community of Black women we still need to be using an equity framework.”

The issue of “belonging in STEM” emerges long before young Black women enter the workforce. It can begin before kindergarten, when young learners do not receive the early math education that sets the foundation for all STEM learning, and test scores show them falling behind by third grade. It can also be felt by students in K-12 classrooms, when there are few Black teachers as role models. (In Washington state, just 1.5% of teachers are Black, compared to 4.5% of the student body.) Or in high school, where students of color are often underrepresented in dual credit courses or other career exploration opportunities.

The panelists touched on the importance of “positionality” – who you are and where you’re coming from – to advocate for and mentor young Black women entering the STEM workforce.

As Raeshawna put it during the panel: “We all have a stake in this – we can all leverage our influence and positionality to provide an opportunity or connection.”

Lynne K. Varner, Washington STEM CEO, gave the keynote address at the event.

Washington STEM CEO Lynne K. Varner, who gave the Summit’s keynote address, touched on another important aspect of belonging: when Black women bring their talent and perspective to STEM, emerging technologies and research benefit. In her remarks, Lynne cited Dr. Joy Buolamwini, a computer scientist who coined the term “exclusion overhead”— which she describes as “the cost of systems that don’t take into account the diversity of humanity.” This shows up in technologies like AI or facial recognition software, as well as our state’s education system.

“Our state invests $13 billion annually to educate more than 1 million students. But the system isn’t always efficient or equitable, often because the exclusion overhead is built in,” Lynne said in her keynote. “You could say Washington STEM’s entire mission is to rectify this “exclusion overhead” so that future generations don’t continue to pay the price for this inefficiency—because that is what it is.”

Fostering belonging for Black women—and all the other identities they also hold—is critical to the future of the STEM workforce. As Lynne put it in her keynote: “Innovation, for all of its wonder, flounders when it doesn’t include us.”

Learn more about Black Women in STEM 2.0.