Spotlight: ESTEAM Mentors & Role Models
Each month we spotlight a woman or girl in tech who inspires us. This month we are highlighting a few of the mentors & role models from the She Started It ESTEAM Summit. On September 23, these women shared their passion for and journey into career fields related to entrepreneurship, science, technology, engineering, art & math with over 150 girls from around the region.
Elizabeth Bollwerk is an archaeologist who works with digital data, collaborating with researchers to analyze historic records and artifacts using digital methods to develop new ideas and interpretations of the past and, by extension, the present. Elizabeth is passionate about the value of community engagement and has worked with a variety of cultural heritage organizations to gather feedback from audiences and members to ensure those institutions meet the needs of their communities. She is an active proponent of making museum collections and their associated data more accessible and relevant to the general public.
Kirsten Fuoti has been teaching Physics and Engineering in the Math, Engineering, and Science Academy at Albemarle High School since 2011. She attended The College of William and Mary as an undergraduate and the University of Massachusetts for graduate school where she earned her Masters in Physics. Before teaching, she worked at the Department of Homeland Security as a technical analyst in the fields of explosives detection and cyber security.
Bethany Gordon is a 1st year PhD student in the Behavioral Science for Sustainable Systems program at UVA. In her research, she uses virtual reality, behavioral science, biometric technology, and systems engineering as tools to rethink the current limitations of sustainable design in civil engineering. Though engineering was initially a counter-intuitive choice for Bethany, it was one of the best decisions she ever made because it allows her to be both logical and creative in her work.
Kathryn Jaquish is a master's student at the University of Virginia. Her study area is in Civil and Environmental Engineering, with a focus on water resources. Water is Kathryn’s passion and this past summer she had the opportunity to go to Peru to do research. The focus was on an Inca water system located near Cusco, Peru. She is excited to help young girls pursue a STEM education because it has really impacted her life and her direction. Kathryn hopes to show girls how engineering could empower them and open up so many opportunities.
Kayla Johnson is a quality engineer originally from Hartford, CT. After graduating from the University of Connecticut with her degree in mechanical engineering she was looking for a change, and eventually made Charlottesville her home.
Andria Li is a second-year student at the University of Virginia majoring in Biology and Spanish. She is pre-med, and loves STEM because it is the utilization of logic and reasoning for the improvement of our world.
Karen Measells is an Operations and Systems Engineer for the UVA Health System, where she analyzes patient flow and caregiver processes to maximize the efficiency of care in the hospital and clinics. Karen has a degree in Industrial Engineering, where she learned to understand the way a system functions, both at a system and an individual level, and then make improvements that will reduce wasted time and resources. Although Industrial Engineering was developed in factories, Karen has spent her career in health care because of the many opportunities for improvement.
Alana Moczydlowski has dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Molecular Biology and Mathematics and a Master of Science in Statistics. She has spent many years working in the scientific and technical community supporting aerosol biology research.
April Ruggles joined RMF Engineering as a mechanical engineer in 2016. She holds four patents from her time in the computer hardware industry at IBM & Lenovo. April earned her BSME from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, where she worked as a Junior Scientist on the construction of a Neutrino Detector created in collaboration with the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. April loves fixing her own vehicles when they break and tragically, her Honda Civic hasn’t had a single issue since she bought it four years ago.
Gabrielle Schoppa is a technology teacher at Burley Middle School. This is Ms. Schoppa's 11th year at Burley. Prior to teaching middle school tech, she taught French, Language Arts, and at both at elementary and high school. She loves making things, discovering new technologies, and learning by doing-- even if projects don't turn out as they should the first time around.
Kim Scott is a co-founder and the vice president of data science at Astraea, a Charlottesville startup dedicated to solving complex problems about the Earth. She is passionate about wrangling data and using novel machine learning methods to help steer organizations towards better decision making. Prior to becoming a data scientist/entrepreneur, Kim was a radio astronomer, working to improve image processing algorithms of data taken from ALMA (the largest radio telescope in the world), and using advanced analytics to study galaxy evolution. Kim earned her PhD in astronomy from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
