>> 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] The first week has been a lot of fun, but it has also been really fast-paced, and kind of a blur.

>> All three of us, we were just this amazing team right off the bat.

How do you do this?

>> So, Regina's never pumped gas before.

>> [LAUGH] >> What you're gonna do is you're going to take the key to unlock the gas cover.

[MUSIC] It will keep going until it's close to being full.

[MUSIC] >> The idea of adult is so foreign to me still.

I don't feel like an adult.

I did it!

Well, we did it.

I guess what defines an adult, doing something you love and being happy with who you are.

I think that I want to get to that point.

I want to figure out how to get there.

[MUSIC] >> We went on to New York City.

I've never been to New York City kind of overwhelmed at the moment.

[MUSIC] Not many people have the opportunity to travel the world, and see so many different places, every day is different, every moment is different, I'm just so excited and it is so surreal still.

[MUSIC] >> This is where I've grown up and lived most of my life.

Growing up in New York, there's a lot going on, but I'm feeling the need to leave now, and at this point in my life, I feel like I need to start figuring out what I'm doing.

I'm in college, and that's what this time is for, to figure out what we're doing, but there's so much out there, and I've only seen a little bit of it.

Freshman year was really tough for me.

One of my computer science recitations, I was the only girl in it.

[LAUGH] I was like whoa, this is what everybody has been telling me about, I'm the only girl here.

I started noticing, girls are more careful when they are asking questions.

I think there's a lot of this pressure for girls in general to be more submissive, and boys can be louder and can take more risks.

I fell into that trap, I was afraid to ask questions.

But why can't I break out of it?

Why can I not do all these things?

Even for girls who are aware, it's still hard.

[MUSIC] There were a lot of times when I considered, I think this isn't the right major for me.

But I know that I like it, and that's why I'm continuing to pursue it.

But it's just a lot of mixed feelings right now.

[MUSIC] We interviewed Professor Kuchenbecker in New York.

She comes from Penn.

>> Nice Penn shirt.

>> I'm Regina Lynn.

I study computer science at the University of Pennsylvania.

>> Yea.

>> [LAUGH] The reason that I joined this trip is because I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do in life.

>> Me too.

>> [LAUGH] [MUSIC] I'm Katherine Kuchenbecker.

I am an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

But I actually do a lot of things, I do robotic surgery systems that allow a doctor to remote-control a robot that goes through tiny incisions.

I have a secondary appointment in computer science, and I'm in the graduate groups of bioengineering and electrical engineering.

And specifically, in an area called haptics, which has to do with the sense of touch, we call this haptography.

Haptic photography.

In this research project, we started by capturing how a whole bunch of different surfaces feel to touch.

Here I have this piece of brick, or this piece of IV plastic, or this piece of terracotta.

Notice that when you're touching objects through a tool, you can actually feel a lot about their identity, like that one feels really rough.

So we created an instrument that can measure everything you're feeling and how you're moving and then we made models of them.

The demos that you guys are gonna try are virtual versions of these textures in a computer.

It's like a 3D mouse and when you drag back and forth on the surface, you'll feel a texture.

You just hold it like a pencil, just like that and if you push down.

You should feel it pushes back on you.

You feel how it's like bumpy?

>> Yes.

>> And then I can change it to something else.

Like this is brick.

>> Wow.

>> I think there are a lot of exciting applications.

Interactive, virtual reality experiences, like 3D movies or games.

Or as I've mentioned before as in robotic surgery and medical technology and also to help them learn to do such tasks.

>> This is a tooth with a cavity on the top of it that you should be able to feel right now with that stick.

That's another cavity right there that you should be able to feel the pop.

>> I'm able to feel what he's feeling.

>> This is so cool.

>> I just couldn't believe that this was something that someone had thought of, it was so amazing.

You don't think of touch in that sense, like feeling the vibrations, it's a very different way of looking at things, which I think is the whole point of engineering, just looking at things in a different way.

>> Are there any personal obstacles that came along while you were pursuing your career?

>> Yeah, the first obstacle that I faced, which I think a lot of women in engineering and minorities face, is that when you look at me, the average person probably doesn't guess that I'm an engineer, that I'm a professor, that I'm a roboticist.

Still, when I meet new people and they're like what do you do?

They're always surprised and they're like, wow.

You're an engineer, you must be really smart and that's sending a clear message of like wow, you don't look like what you are.

Are you sure?

I guess even though that's not always overtly meant to discourage you, it can sometimes make you question, do I really belong here?

Is this really a career where I'll fit?

But I found that it's actually kinda fun to violate people's expectations and surprise them.

I'm like yes, I am a roboticist and I am a professor at a Ivy League school, and I teach engineering.

Yeah, if you wanna talk about circuits or code with me, I'd love that.

Even though you're having to put out this little bit of effort to kind of broaden someone's mind, it will pay back because you're helping expand the view of what an engineer looks like and is.

The second obstacle is a little bit more personal.

I've always been very ambitious and I've wanted to achieve a lot.

But there were times when I think that edged even beyond what is reasonable, into perfectionism or getting depressed when things didn't go as well as I want.

>> So that's one thing that I've had personally, anxiety about the overwhelming amount of work, the learning curve.

Can you just speak to how to tackle those issues, and stay the course?

>> I think it's important to remember to reach out for help and that you have an advisor, you have friends, you have family members.

Going through teenage years and going through college, there's so much change, you're learning how to be on your own.

It's really unreasonable to expect that everything you do will be perfect.

But your brain is like a muscle, and your skills improve over time through effort by working hard, and that's the key.

That's the motor that pushes you through your life is by expending effort and time and trying things and realizing that you can grow and learn over life.

[MUSIC] >> She comes from Penn, and I didn't realize there were women like her there.

[MUSIC] Just knowing that she is out there is just so comforting because we all reach a point where we feel intense self-doubt or when we have these obstacles, and that this isn't a sign of failure is really important to me.

[MUSIC] >> I've never been to New York City, so I'm just so excited for all the new experiences and places and people and things.

[MUSIC] >> We got to visit a really cool art studio in Brooklyn.

>> Our next interview is with Zaria Forman and she uses her artistic skills to advocate for climate change groups.

>> We got to see her paint.

>> So Zaria was working on the largest painting that she's ever done, and it was of this icescape in Antarctica.

And I think it was really cool just seeing her process, watching her with her grid papers and just getting to see behind Behind the scenes and see her studio was really cool.

I was always playing around with art supplies when I was little, and I just kept going back to the pastels.

The simplicity of it, make a mark on the paper and it's there, it's like that's it.

It's just paper and pigment.

And you can move it around with fingers or tools or whatever you want.

And it's just that simplicity.

I just still thought, I don't know if I love art that much that I want to be doing it every day of my life and make it my vocation.

But, it just kept making the most sense and I kept loving it more and more, and it's like in retrospect.

I realize that's absolutely what I should be doing.

[LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> So how did you have the influence to incorporate science into your art?

>> Basically, I grew up with a Mom who was an artist, she was a landscape photographer.

And so, every summer for about one month we would travel somewhere fairly remote.

We just started going to different places in the United States and then when I was ten or 11, we started leaving the country every year.

So, I feel very fortunate and lucky to have had those opportunities, and having them gave me this time and space for a month at least over a year to soak up nature and be inspired by these really remote places that are far away from cities, far away from people.

And just pristine nature.

The trip I took in Greenland was an expedition that I conceived of.

She had this idea to mirror an expedition that happened in 1869 which was the first art expedition to the arctic.

She thought, well, like, wouldn't it be fascinating to mirror that journey 150 years later with a group of artists and scholars just as they had done, and the trip is very much in its idea phase.

She and I had been talking about it for about a year, but nothing was actually planned, and that's when she was diagnosed with brain cancer.

And passed away pretty quickly six months later.

But even during those months of her illness, she was still so dedicated to this trip and so obsessed with it.

She wouldn't stop talking about it, she kept wanting to prepare for it and she was just so gung-ho about it that it really inspired me and made me realize I have to take this trip in her honor after she passes away.

And having that purpose laid out in front of me after she passed away, was not only something to focus on and kind of pour my grief into and process my grief with, but also it just felt like the right thing to do.

[MUSIC] I traveled to Greenland and at the time, climate change was really not a topic of discussion here in the United States as it is today.

I just didn't realize how huge of a crisis it was until I went there and met locals that lived there who were dealing with it on a day-to-day basis, and having to adapt their lifestyle because of the drastic changes that are happening.

So I wanted to focus my work on those issues.

And started making my ice drawings, stuff like that.

>> Through your work what do you hope is the application of your work?

How do you hope that this will change the viewers?

>> Well, thank you for asking that.

[LAUGH] So climate change is such a distant concept for most of us cuz it's not happening in our every day lives.

It's like this slow train wreck.

Devastating events happen every day on scales both global and personal.

When I was in Greenland, I scattered my mother's ashes amidst the melting ice.

Now she remains a part of the landscape she loved so much.

Even as it too passes and takes on new form, a lot of studies have shown that we make decisions, and we take action, based on our emotions, more than anything else.

You can write the word glacier and you can describe it, but if you see an image of a glacier, it's an experience.

Coming back from that landscape, I was just left with this giant question of how do I do this landscape justice?

It's so epic.

It's so vast.

I ideally want viewers to have an emotional reaction.

And I mean, I think they do, that's one of the things that art does.

More than words, more than a graph, more than a scary news report, I'm trying to encourage people with positivity and hope, if you fall in love with something you wanna protect it, you wanna do what's best for it.

I realized art was my passion.

And it was just a part of me.

And it made sense, It felt really natural.

And so when I started making the work about climate change, specifically, it just felt like so aligned.

It was like God, yeah, this is what I need to be doing right now.

[MUSIC] >> Everyone in our RV fell in love with Sharia.

I thought it was really profound for her to share that story.

Because, I know so many people who have lost somebody who was the driving force behind their interest.

>> I feel like we ourselves feel more inspired when we think of other people than when we think of ourselves, like how she was inspired by her mother and how Zaria ultimately realized she had it in herself to continue with the expedition and then make this art that was completely her own.

I wonder if it was all that traveling that helped her really connect to herself.

[MUSIC] >> Travel was probably the biggest education I got.

You can learn so much about experiencing different cultures, but also different landscapes.

I would just, yeah, make sure that you take those moments to soak it in and just sit and be with it.

>> So we're gonna ready to go leave New York, head down to east coast to Atlanta.

So it's about an 800 something mile drive.

I just need someone to be guiding me every step of the way.

[LAUGH] [MUSIC] Today is day one of the second week of our trip.

I dunno, it feels like time has kinda flown by a little.

Just being on the road and having the busy schedule that we do.

Everything's passing by really quickly.

[MUSIC] >> Of all things during this trip, I've loved driving the most, and knowing that I can do it, it kind of gives me the courage to go home and get on the road myself.

Like this is never something that I would've done.

I never think about getting in my car and just going, but it makes you feel kind of empowered.

I love being on the road.

I really do.

And honestly, living in an RV is an experience.

I definitely makes you closer to people because there's no where else to go.

We see the world together, partly because, again, there's no where else to go.

But that's led to some interesting conversations just about everything.

[MUSIC] The meaning of life comes from the beautiful things we experience.

Those are the things that add value to existing.

They may not add meaning per se, but they add value.

So in the end this is what life is actually about.

These are the fleeting moments that you can't capture everyday.

These aren't the moments you can buy.

>> Here, here.

[MUSIC].

>> We are on the road for a long time.

This is our first experience of being on the road for such a long time.

I'm just going through a lot of things and like there's your period of time, leaning a lot about my self and I thinl that's a good thing.

I'm challenging myself and making myself kind of move out of my comfort zone and that can be uncomfortable, but it can also be very, Lightning.

>> So we're in Atlanta, Georgia.

>> Here at the Clinton Global Initiative.

>> And Jewel Burks.

She was in a panel at CGI like two feet away from Bill Clinton.

She is the youngest person that we've interviewed so far.

>> She's a young, a black female in a room that >> is very under represented with other people like her.

She's owning it, she's owning who she is.

>> I always sorta had a plan like, when I got to the fifth grade, I was like okay, I wanna be president of the student body or whatever.

So I need to win over all the fifth graders.

I'm gonna become the fifth grade, I've always like thought about it like that.

When I got to college, my plan was like okay, I need to get this internship.

I know we were gonna be meeting with Google, I want that internship.

Some might say it's a good thing, others might say it's stubborn, but when I get my mind set on something, I'm really, really set.

And generally, that's been good, I think.

I say personally, I don't know how good it's been, cuz like boyfriends haven't [LAUGH], they haven't fared well with that sort of thing, but.

>> That's okay.

>> [LAUGH] [MUSIC] Tell us about your journey, who you are today.

>> Sure, so I graduated from school when I was 20, 21, and then was at Google for my internship in Silicon Valley.

And I'm like whoa, this is a whole world out here, that I had no idea about, and that's really when I kinda fell in love >> So can you just tell us generally what Partpic is?

How you came up with the idea?

And why you believed in it so much?

>> Yeah, so I decided to leave Google because I wanted to be closer to my siblings in Atlanta.

>> And going to another industry which was parts distributions.

So, completely different industry.

And when I got there, I was like, no.

I made a huge mistake.

This is so bad, I'm so sad.

Like, why did I do this.

And I was working at the parts Why did I leave Google.

I was workign at the parts distribution company, managingthe call center and being the one who got all the >> angry calls when people were upset.

Because if something breaks and you're just pulling it out of a refrigerator or dishwasher or wherever, you might not have a part number.

It may just be a loose object and you're like, what is this thing?

So a lot of times on the calls, they would say, hey I have this object.

Can I just send you a picture of it and you guys figure it out?

And we would say, no, we're not doing that, because that's outside of our operation.

But, that gave me the idea, okay, why can't they just take a picture of it and use that as the way that they search?

And that was the spark for my company, which is called Partpic.

So then, as you know, music is playing and you don't know what it is.

And you can Shazam it and it tells you exactly what it is.

>> Basically Partpic is like Shazam for parts.

I have an idea, Emailed my mom, and she was like, that's a really good idea.

Then I started researching, like what do you actually need to do to start a company.

How much might it cost, and my calculations were all off.

[LAUGH] But it was enough to set the ground work for where we are now.

When I was in it, I was there from 8 AM to 1 AM, I mean really kind of all-in, trying to build the foundation of my business.

>> So you said today, during your conversation with President Clinton, that you were 23 when you started this company, I'm 24, I still don't know [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> what I want to do >> I just wanna talk about being a leader, especially at a young age and maintaining your confidence and how you battle those inner doubts.

>> Yes, so I don't really see very many start-up founders who look like me.

There's a lot of times where I'm questioning myself.

I thought I don't know how I got here.

Why am I here?

Because I'm young and I'm a woman.

One time, someone who was working for me said that they would prefer to deal with my co-founder because they're not accustomed to dealing with a woman as their manager or their boss.

And that person wasn't working for us for very long.

That only happened once, but more so from the outside world, so like, it happens all the time where we're at a trade show, and I'm like at the booth and people are just like, so, what do you do here?

Like did they hire you to man this booth?

And I'm just like, no.

Actually, this is my company and what questions can I answer for you?

Or even in meetings I notice that all the time if I have someone else on my team with me, they will direct all questions to that person.

So those are things, and I guess they call them micro-aggressions, that I deal with on a daily basis because they're not expecting me to be the person who's leading this company.

And so in that regard, I'm happy to surprise people.

So a big part of it for me has been to just know who I am.

When I first got started people were like that's technically, you're not gonna be able to build that, it's too hard.

You start to second guess yourself and your skills.

And now we're like do you wanna see how it works?

Here you go.

So it doesn't matter what anyone else is saying about me.

It is something that I can do.

You don't have to be on here, I'm doing this.

Do you have any parting life advice regarding decisions like choosing a career and finding your passion?

>> Don't be frustrated with curves in the road or in the path.

Try to find the one sort of glimmer of goodness in it.

Because when I went to this parts distribution company, it seemed like a bad turn in my life.

But it actually turned out to be really good.

Only because I switched the way I was thinking about it, and thought, what could I make of this?

Me making the best of it was like opening my eyes up.

That's what has completely changed my life.

She's, I think, my favorite interview.

She's only two years older than me and she's amassed so much.

Also ,she's from a small town, so I like that.

I'm a small town girl and I can relate to that.

Working in a place that you don't like is so draining, but she still has the energy to go home and put energy into her goals.

She was so passionate about it.

She took the best out of those things and went forward.

But, I'm kind of, maybe, at the glass half empty stage.

[LAUGH] So, just, changing my outlook and looking at things with a glass half full instead of glass half empty, and just gaining a new perspective.

There's not only one environment.

There's not only one job.

There's not only one way of living.

I really want to spend some time internally thinking what else do I want to get out of this and then ask questions geared towards that.

What else do we have to learn?

Where else do I have room to grow?

[MUSIC] Going into the end of this trip, there's so much to see and do.

>> A lot of times I've allowed fear to cripple me, especially what others thought.

>> I know I had to work in this industry, but I don't have to race anyone.

It's just about my determination.

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

And I don't think that's always the case.

>> Don't do something that you think you should do because you're afraid make choices out of excitement and passion and interest.

>> The future just feels very open.

To learn more about how to get involved or to watch interviews from the road, Visit Roadtripnation.com