Mentoring Women and Minorities in STEM Careers

This week, my guest, Mary Fernandez, is joining me to talk about MentorNet, an organization dedicated to advancing women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. Mentoring helps women in remain in STEM careers and also be successful. Part of the challenge is gender, but another is race and culture and Mary will talk about her own story of how mentoring helped her overcome her challenges as a Latina woman in STEM and how MentorNet now is helping students of diverse backgrounds succeed.

Mary Fernandez was named CEO of MentorNet in 2013 and since that time has renewed the organization’s commitment to its core values. Drawing upon the past decade’s revolutionary changes in social communication and significant advances in mentoring social science, Fernandez and her team have completely re-envisioned MentorNet’s program and platform and advocate for scaling their initiatives significantly, as they are convinced that their new methodology will help all STEM students.

A leader and active volunteer, Fernandez earned a PhD in Computer Science from Princeton University and is the author of more than 50 scholarly publications. She holds five patents and has mentored more than 20 STEM protégés. In 2012 Fernandez was recognized by AT&T as a ‘Champion of Diversity,’ a distinction awarded annually to only five of AT&T’s more than 300,000 employees, and in 2011 she received HENAAC’s ‘Outstanding Technical Achievement-Industry’ award.