Lisa Davis, chief information officer of Georgetown University, says there are many ways to encourage young women to start and stay in the science and technology fields. After all, nearly all businesses have a technology component these days.
In this video interview with The Enterprisers Project, Davis explains the importance of encouraging young women to pursue education in STEM fields.
One of the things that I'm passionate about is encouraging our young girls and women to stay in technology or to stay in our STEM fields. And we know that the data shows that we lose our young girls in middle school.
Middle school is when peer pressure sets in, you know it's not necessarily cool to be smart, and girls start to lose their interest in math and science. We must really start engaging with our girls at a younger level so that they stay in STEM fields and we're doing many different things at Georgetown and certainly this is one of the things that I love to speak with. I go out and meet with elementary schools, middle schools and high schools and talk about women in technology and the opportunities for women in technology.
We also know that in all of the C-Suite that the CIO is continuing to decline, I think we're at about 3 percent women as CIOs across the country now, so we are the lowest percentage of women in the C-Suite as a CIO position.
And really mentoring, helping women move forward in leadership roles, whether it's in technology or not in technology and making sure that we're all extending a hand in helping each other move forward. I think we have to continue to do more. I think one of the things that's really important about encouraging girls to stay in technology is we need to humanize the field of technology for them.
You know instead of thinking about technology from an engineering standpoint, how can technology change the world? And that's what I find the girls are really interested in. How technology can change the world, how we humanize the field of technology and the STEM fields because there is not a profession today the doesn't have a technology component to it and that's why it's so important that we teach these skills, the girls stay in math and science and they continue to focus on those disciplines through high school and into college.
Read this Harvard Business Review article, "Stopping the exodus of women in science."
Lisa Davis is Vice President for Information Services and CIO at Georgetown University. Prior to being recruited to Georgetown University, Ms. Davis served in various technology leadership roles during her 26-year career in the federal government. Most recently she was Assistant Director of IT and CIO of the U.S. Marshals Service. She has been recognized as an outstanding leader in the design and delivery of infrastructures and applications to solve complex business problems. Follow her on Twitter @LisaDavisCIO.
