Exelon Utilities CEO Anne Pramaggiore:
“What I love about the Icebox Derby program is that it hits all three elements. It’s creating awareness, offering access to experiential learning process, and confidence is created by seeing the women in ComEd who are doing these jobs and also from meeting other girls who, like them, are interested in STEM.
I’ll give you an anecdote of one of the girls who participated in the program two summers ago.
We were sitting together while being interviewed for a story about the Icebox Derby program. I knew she was part of the Girls Who Code group at her school, and I asked her about it.
She said, well, there’s only four of us in the group, and we don’t have a lot to do. Sometimes all we do is sit around and talk. I asked what they talked about? Having been a thirteen-year old girl myself at one point, I was imagining that they were talking about typical young teen things. She said, at the last meeting we talked about the difference between copper communications technology and wireless communications technology and the meeting before that, JavaScript.
As you can imagine, I was definitely impressed by what they were talking about. But what struck me most was what she said about having very few girls to connect with at her school. I was glad that we were able to offer her a STEM experience through the Icebox Derby, where she got to be part of a larger group of girls and young women who have similar interests. That builds confidence.”