>> Women make up 48% of the workforce, but only hold 23% of jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math.

which is why three young women interested in those fields set out on a cross-country journey to talk to the trailblazers who came before them.

They hit the road in search of wisdom and guidance to find what it actually takes for women, passionate about the sciences, to build a life around doing what they love, because breakthroughs come from breaking down barrier.

A balanced equation.

[MUSIC] >> When I applied to college and picked a major, I picked computer science.

I really enjoyed it.

It's not just math and equations, it's also being creative.

I realized, wait, this is kind of cool.

>> I always knew I wanted to be an electrical engineer, because I had this fascination with electricity.

But the constant rhetoric around women in science, that was something that stuck with me.

>> There's still such a need for inclusion in science and diversity.

I still think that we don't feel very comfortable in those spaces and we still feel like it's a very dominated field, [MUSIC] And so, I think it's really exciting to go and see women who are able to take control and demand what they wanted in life, and create this successful career out of all of their passions and interests.

I think that's the whole purpose of this road trip.

>> So thus far we've only met over Skype, so it's gonna be cool to meet each other in person finally.

>> Hi.

>> Ariel >> So this summer we are going to be traveling across the country in a big green RV.

>> It's a month long road trip and we're gonna start in Boston and go west until we hit the Bay Area in California.

>> I had to travel about 13 states and interview about 20 women >> To get their perspective about what does it take to be a woman in STEM, and STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

>> I would really like to know what bstacles they've had to tackle and what got you involved in science?

How did you decide on your career?

How did you find your passion?

I think it'll be very influential in my own life and career, and finding out how to create my own road in life.

>> I think one of the most important things about this is exposure.

Is showing them women who are doing it, creating role models.

I think it can have a profound impact.

>> I'm really excited and kind of nervous, but mostly just like I'm ready to go [LAUGH].

>> She's so cute.

>> This is actually happening and this is a crazy adventure.

>> Okay, I'm stuck [LAUGH].

Okay, how am I stuck?

>> It looks awesome.

>> Yeah.

>> Somebody please.

>> Stuck again.

Moving into the RV made it very real, very fast.

>> It's a really nice RV.

So I was really happy about that.

>> Really spacious and much more spacious than I thought it was gonna be.

>> I just love all the extra space.

>> It's interesting that all our beds are not supposed to be beds.

I think this leg collapses.

>> And this goes- >> Wait, hold on, I'm stuck on here now.

>> [LAUGH] It looks uncomfortable.

>> I think it's like this.

>> This is great, I could do that.

>> I think we hit it off immediately.

I mean these are individuals that I don't know.

So I'm really afraid, but still really excited to kind of come out of my comfort zone [MUSIC] My name is Ariel Noble and I am 24 years old born and I'm here in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Little Rock's beautiful to me.

It's home.

I'm more of a country girl [LAUGH] so I'm excited to see how much I can adapt [LAUGH] and change.

What makes it a little bit outside of my comfort zone is being away from home and the comfort of family.

>> So what do you think about being away?

>> It's good.

[MUSIC] I'm gonna text you all the time.

>> We're together all the time.

>> All the time [LAUGH].

>> That's a good thing, but I'm proud of her because she's pretty, I don't wanna say she's dependent on us,- >> I am [LAUGH].

>> But she, this is showing some independence.

>> Yeah.

So I'm in grad school now studying Biomedical Sciences.

But I'm kind of at a point where I don't really know what's next At 14 I said I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't know what that meant.

I didn't know what work I would have to put in.

Worked two and three jobs at a time during undergrad to find of offset college cost, and it was very tough, very hard [LAUGH].

I had spoken with an advisor who told me that maybe science wasn't for me.

I was getting well why don't you try a different degree?

Maybe you should be a teacher, do something easier.

I did it anyway, but I did internalize those things, and I have had negative self-talk.

I really hope that this will help me to be more bold and courageous.

I wanted to go to medical school, but I've talked myself out of it every single time.

I want to find what makes me happy, maybe that's not attainable, but I'm gonna take some time to figure it out.

>> We should put our Rubik's cubes together.

I really like Ariel and Elyssia.

We're such different people, but I feel like we get along really well.

Yeah, my mom put an apple in.

>> Aw, that's so sweet.

>> [LAUGH] Classic.

[LAUGH] Shoutout to my mom.

[LAUGH] I'm Regina.

I'm from New York City.

I live in the Lower Eastside of Manhattan, near China Town.

I'm a computer science major at the University of Pennsylvania.

My parents are immigrants from China.

I think Asian women are expected to kind of like do what they're told.

I guess be more submissive.

Not being too loud or just not standing out too much, I think, is what's expected of Asian girls.

Growing up there was a lot of that from my parents.

What kind of things girls should be doing.

The things that girls are good at and the things that boys are good at, and I actually really liked computer science, but it wasn't something that my parents expected of me or I guess the people around me thought I would do, and I guess a lot of me wonders if that's because I am a girl.

Computer Science, it's not something I feel 100% confident about always, but I know that I like it and that's why I'm continuing to pursue it.

Last semester, in one of my computer science recitations, I was the only girl in it.

I was like, whoa, this is like what everyone has been telling me about.

I'm the only girl here.

For every girl who goes into computer science, people say like, yeah you're such a role model for girls.

But people won't say to any guy in computer science like wow, how do you feel about being a role model for all of these young guys?

No one says that to them.

So they don't have that problem.

But I guess that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited too.

Like me and the people were interviewing.

I wanna hear about the struggles that these women have faced and how they've overcome them and how I can overcome mine.

I wanna get to that point where I can do something I love and be happy with who I am.

>> I always keep my nails done.

For the road trip I brought my nerdy nails.

They're binary and then that's the broken image icon and then circuit boards.

>> [LAUGH] Nice.

>> We've bonded over some really random things.

I think that's what makes all the relationships in this RV so much more sincere.

I like it.

It's authentic.

[SOUND] >> I'm Alicia Dennis.

I'm 21 years old and I go to school at the University of Notre Dame.

But I did grow up in the Denver area, like right in the heart of Denver.

So this is very much where I grew up.

[MUSIC] When I was younger this street right here, used to be the border between the gang territories.

I was born into a bit of an unstable family.

I had a roof over my head but I was kind of on my own.

So, my sixth grade teacher kind of started to step in.

>> She really needed a lot of support because she wasn't getting that at home.

Many times she didn't have groceries, many times uncle would leave her for days.

Water was shut off, power was shut off.

That just broke my heart.

Many times, I would go home and I would just cry my eyes out.

I felt she was a human being that needed some guidance and some love and some caring, and I felt that I could do that for her.

>> So Miss Tester became my mom, and I went from having almost no real familial support to turning around and just having the best little family that I could ever ask for.

[MUSIC] And when I started high school, that's when I, for the first time in my life, found out what an engineer was.

I actually started to find my friend group.

I have found the nerds, I figured out that they actually do exist.

It was actually great.

I joined the robotics team.

I was starting to find outlets for this passion inside of me and I think that's when I became so aware of how few women are in STEM.

So I am going to try and repair a bad solder joint on this AM radio.

When I was a kid somebody in my family told me that I should just stick to English and Social Studies cuz girls don't do Math and Science.

That was something that even to this day I have to fight.

When you tell a child that, you're almost reprogramming their interests.

>> You know, I'm very proud of her getting into Notre Dame.

And it's not a very diverse university.

And so that was a big challenge.

I remember her calling me from school.

You know, I don't feel like I fit in.

>> I have the case of impostor syndrome where I feel like I'm not doing well enough to be in what I'm doing.

I don't feel like I belong.

The whole notion that girls don't do math or science is why we don't have girls in STEM, and my whole mission is to change that.

[MUSIC] [SOUND] [MUSIC] So our first interview of this road trip is going to be with Dr. Evelynn Hammonds.

This is interview number one.

I'm excited, I'm scared.

She has degrees in electrical engineering and physics as well.

And she's currently teaching a course on the history of science.

>> I think it's really cool to talk about the evolution of science over time.

And she's also interested in race and gender studies.

[MUSIC] >> Hi, nice to meet you.

[MUSIC] >> So my name is Ariel Noble, I'm a current graduate student at the University of Arkansas for Medical sciences and Biomedical science and I chose to join the road trip in the interest of finding my way and figuring out what I'm passionate about.

I want to personally know how your experiences shaped your decision to go into Physics and Electrical Engineering and then subsequently to study the History of Science.

>> Well,so I grew up in Atlanta.

My parents were both college graduates.

My dad majored in Chemistry and Mathematics and my mother in Elementary Education.

So my mother was an elementary school teacher and my father wanted to be an engineer but there was no engineering school that African Americans could attend in Georgia in those days.

So he ended up being a civil servant at the post office.

Which was a place at that time where many African American men who have college degrees work because just the limitations.

I always had an interest in science and my parents completely supported that so I spent two and a half years at Spelman studying Physics and two and half years at Georgia Tech studying Electrical Engineering.

>> How many women would you estimate were in that program at the time.

>> In my actual class, I was the only African American woman.

It was a pretty anti-woman, anti-minority culture.

How many other women of color are in your program?

>> Maybe one [LAUGH].

>> Okay, so everybody keeps feeling that sense of, why am I the only one here?

The kind of questions that became more important to me was to try to understand why aren't there more African Americans, Latinos, and women doing Physics?

I didn't understand it, and I really wanted to understand it.

My Physics professor would always say these are not Physics questions.

And those questions became very, very important to me.

And so the place to answer those kinda questions turned out to be the history of science.

So that's how I got here.

>> What do you think are the reasons that we don't have many women in the STEM fields?

>> It's very important for people to really see this as a historical question.

So in the 19th Century the leaders of the scientific profession moved to make US science look more like Europe.

So, introducing the PhD, introducing scientific publications.

And, people who are trying to elevate the status of the field don't wanna be associated with socially undesirable groups.

And the socially undesirable groups that we're talking about are women and certainly minorities.

And so those kind of exclusionary practices were put in place because of their commitment to wanting Science and Engineering to be highly prestigious professions.

But then of course there were always lingering questions about female capacity to do intellectual work.

There were people who argued that if women got engaged in intellectual work, they wouldn't be as fertile.

>> [LAUGH] >> That your brain affected your ovaries and therefore you would not have as many children and then women had to fight very hard to be let back into the door.

So, Science is not separate from society in creating notions of gender and race, it's part and parcel of it and that's the key issue that I work on and why I read about as much as I can about it.

All the time.

>> So what do you think we can do to help increase the participation of women and minorities?

>> So you know, the one thing you can do to help, is to do it.

To stay in the fields that you're interested in.

To do good work.

And the other thing I would say is constantly confronting gender and racial stereotypes directly.

People have expectations of what I should do, and they can have their expectations.

It has nothing to do with what I'm gonna do.

[MUSIC] >> That whole interview, I think, just struck me.

I've never met another African American woman with a degree in electrical engineering.

[MUSIC] And in some ways, that was so affirming, to say she looks like she did it.

In a way I just needed to see that.

[MUSIC] When she mentioned that you can feel isolated, really resonated with me.

In the struggles of engineering there are issues of race.

I feel it.

I experience it.

It upsets me.

But I don't have people to talk to about it.

My friends don't understand.

[MUSIC] But her brief lecture as to why there's not that representation of women in minorities, in the step fields.

It reinvigorated a fire in me.

That's got to change.

I want girls to see And say, I can do that.

That's cool.

I'm just kind of excited to meet women who are in different sectors.

Engineering and tech and all kinds of careers, and to learn their stories.

I want to ask them what struggles they faced, what noise they hear and how they've dealt with the pressures around them.

>> Whoa interview time.

>> So where in Cambridge, Massachusetts and we're talking to Janet Echelman she's a studio artist and a sculptor who does these large art installations that are these huge nets.

That she places in urban settings like hanging from buildings.

And there's a lot of creativity and engineering involved.

>> So she combines art and science.

And I think that that's very cool.

You know, those are two different rooms that maybe we don't think that go together.

I can't wait to learn about what she's doing.

>> In terms of STEM, I don't have any traditional formal education at all.

I mean, I started out as a painter, then a sculptor.

Now I'm using engineering and architecture and, I don't, what field am I in?

People talk about science and art and the divide.

I'm like, it's just the world.

I wanna know about everything.

[MUSIC] When I got out college, I really had almost no background in art, and decided I wanted to be an artist.

I thought, well, okay, the way you become something is you go to school.

I applied to seven art schools, and I was rejected by all seven.

And that turned out to be the luckiest thing ever in my life, because it forced me to have to learn how to teach myself.

To do what I do, there is no program that leads here.

I had to devise my own education, and it took a long time and there were a lot of setbacks and it was hard to support myself, but if I couldn't be making art I felt dead.

And so I just didn't give up.

>> Did your family or your parents kind of influence the choices that you made in pursuing art?

>> When I graduated from college, my father said to me, Did any of your professors tell you you have talent and should become an artist?

And I paused, and I said no.

[LAUGH] It's just the only thing I want to do.

And wow, I don't know how to lead you from there to here, but I had $300 and for graduation I got a plane ticket to Bali.

And I went off on my own and started walking through the rice fields until I found a little house to rent.

And I began drawing because I knew that I needed to practice.

I went as a painter, I shipped all my paints, and they got lost.

And that is how I became a sculptor because I had no paint.

So I was in a fishing village, they had fishing twine.

And so I started working with the fishermen, learning how they made their nets and began just experimenting.

And from there, I had this dream of bringing it back home.

To bring it to this scale, meant I had to engage in science.

I needed computer science because to make these works at the scale of architecture, we needed to have analytical models in the computer that we could share with a team of engineers, with the owners of the building, with city permit officials.

[MUSIC] And so we are creating soft multi-layered forms that interact with environments and create a space in cities that open up our imagination and allow us to think about a different way of being.

[MUSIC] And what I like about it as well is that it looks delicate but it's incredibly strong.

And that is a combination that I think is an important metaphor for my work.

And as women, it also becomes a metaphor of what we're capable of.

But any kind of life where you're trying to do something new and creative, you're gonna hit rejections all the time.

And let's just expect that.

But just because you're rejecting me from every single art school I've applied to.

That doesn't mean you get to say that I'm not an artist.

>> It's true.

I think, Roadtrip Nation calls out the noise, kind of what everyone else is saying that might be contrary to what we want to do or what we believe in and you kind of overcame it all.

>> Yeah.

I think noise is a great term.

Because in a way, the thing I had to teach myself after college was how to hear my own voice.

Like, honestly I just didn't even know it to recognize it and that time of being alone and journal-ling and sketching and asking questions.

That's how I learned to hear myself amidst the noise.

You have to hear your voice before you can follow it.

And so getting to know yourself is maybe the work of this phase of your life.

[MUSIC] >> It sometimes feels like, I get afraid.

I wonder what's next.

I've always been interested in quite a few different things.

And I'm kind of at a point where I don't really know what's next, what I'm choosing.

And so now I'm kind of taking the time to figure it out.

>> [SOUND] >> You know there are so many careers that kind of, people have carved out for themselves.

So I'm just excited to see it all.

[MUSIC] >> I'm really excited for this trip.

[MUSIC] >> For all the new experiences, and places, and people, and things.

[MUSIC] >> I just, at this point in my life where I feel like I need to start figuring out what I'm doing.

My parents think that the safe choice is usually the best choice.

And I don't think that's always.

But then again, I don't really know.

>> I want to know that it's okay to take like a twisting path and like be okay.

But I guess that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited also to meet the people we're interviewing.

I think a lot of them didn't have very conventional paths.

So it'll be interesting to get out there.

[MUSIC] >> I've never been to New York City.

Kind of overwhelmed at the moment.

When I took physics in high school, I started noticing there are less girls here.

>> Still when I meet new people they're always surprised, like wow!

You're an engineer?

You don't look like what you are.

Are you sure?

>> A big part of it for me has just been to know who I am.

>> I'm going through a lot of changes in a very short period of time.

>> I feel like travel was probably the biggest education I got.

Make sure you take those moments to soak it in.

>> To learn more about how to get involved or to watch interviews from the road, visit roadtripnation.com.