IPG’s Corporate IT Group hosted nearly a hundred middle school girls from J.H.S. 194 William Carr School in Queens, along with their math and science teachers at IPG’s headquarters in New York. The day featured discussions about careers in STEM, viewing “Girls and STEM” commercials and videos from IPG agencies, and an exercise with the girls where they programmed a robot to successfully complete a maze.

The girls were reflective as they heard statistics about the number of girls vs. boys and women vs. men who show interest in STEM throughout their education and stay with it throughout their careers. The room was quiet as they watched videos with inspiring messages. When first introduced to the robot exercise, the girls were a bit timid and unsure. They then each took turns coding and testing their code with the robot, and got louder and fully engaged. As teams completed the tasks successfully, groups broke out in spontaneous cheers, and the girls were taking videos(and snapchatting them!) of their robot following the maze.

IPG’s IT group is committed to helping advance IPG’s diversity and inclusion goals and specifically aims to:

– Create interest in IT careers for students to expose them to opportunities in IT

– Engage interns joining the workforce with relevant discussion topics and help them build a network of business contact

– Expose current staff to important topics to Women in IT and get people talking

– Unifying women leaders to focus on creating a culture of support for Women on IT career paths and developing the pipeline of IT talent.