4 minute read
Ericsson North America partners with Girl Scouts to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders
Our employee base has always been passionate when it comes to community service, advocacy and active volunteering. That giving nature has been a big part of our values since our company began. Over the past two and a half years, we have harnessed this passion to achieve an unprecedented partnership with the Girl Scouts.
Ericsson’s company purpose is to empower an intelligent, sustainable and connected world. We are committed to creating positive impact for society and our customers. Digital inclusion is a key focus area of our Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Program. Investing in increased and equal access to education and developing digital skills are critical to achieving the objectives of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
The Girl Scouts are on a journey to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders by placing 2.5 million girls into a progressive STEM pipeline. This goes far beyond its legacy of cookies, crafts and campfires. As the country’s premier and proven leadership development organization for girls, the Girl Scouts are preparing girls to take their rightful place in leading and shaping an increasingly high-tech world. This is more important than ever when women hold less than 28 percent of STEM jobs in the United States [1], yet 80 percent of them are opting out of graduating with STEM degrees. [2]
The Girls Scouts mission aligns intimately with Ericsson’s ongoing quest to increase the diversity of our workforce and to close the national gap between men and women when it comes to STEM jobs.
The Girl Scouts are truly the expert in girls, and they rely on partners like Ericsson who are the experts in STEM to achieve this critical mission. By working with the Girl Scouts across every Ericsson North American site, employees are making a difference that is locally meaningful and nationally impactful.
We know our employees are busy. But their passion is obvious when so many of them are willing to lend their expertise, experience, consulting and training. They regularly help by speaking at Girl Scout STEM events, co-hosting events with customers who are just as committed to investing in a female STEM workforce pipeline, or by letting Girl Scouts shadow them at work to explore potential STEM careers.
Here are just a few of the recent initiatives in which the Girl Scouts and Ericsson have partnered.
• Networks: Ericsson laid state-of-the-art fiber throughout the new, first-of-its-kind GSNETX STEM Center of Excellence (stemcenter.gsnetx.org) at Camp Whispering Cedars in South Dallas, a more than 90-acre living laboratory where STEM experiences for the girls are hands-on, immersive and intensive.
• Digital transformation: Ericsson’s digital onboarding platform Jumpstart is being co-developed into a multimedia and personalized digital assistant to help STEM volunteers get progressively more tech-savvy, anywhere and anytime; Ericsson is developing an augmented reality application, SpARk, to help girls explore the STEM Center of Excellence in an incredibly immersive new way. Ericsson is leveraging agile ways of work in rapidly prototyping and co-creating these new solutions with the Girl Scouts.
• Internships: The best way to change the pipeline of tomorrow is to fill it today, by putting high school Girl Scouts to work at Ericsson as part of our internship program, which has grown significantly year over year. These experiences make deep and lasting impressions on our interns, and they allow our interns to make deep impressions on Ericsson! These internships are the very capstone of our alliance, ensuring that the progressive STEM pipeline is pointing strategically at our own future.
• Volunteering: Ericsson employees hosted job-shadowing days, networking and etiquette experiences, the Ericsson Technology Camp, field trips to our Ericsson Center of Excellence [3] along with customer partners like AT&T, and so much more.
We look forward to many new accomplishments in the coming years as we stay focused on helping the Girl Scouts achieve their goal of putting 2.5 million girls into STEM jobs by 2025.
To see how Ericsson and the Girl Scouts are preparing young girls for careers in STEM and helping them become tomorrow’s inventors, watch our video at vimeo.com/349100295/e59d5a125.
Learn more about Ericsson’s Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility program at t.eric.sn/3ilopO6.
[1] “Girl Scout STEM Pledge - Girl Scouts.” Girl Scouts of the USA, t.eric.sn/2WplxH0.
[2] Hinz, Serena E., and Xianglei Chen. “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Graduates: Where Are They 4 Years After Receiving a Bachelor’s Degree?” National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a Part of the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 20 Dec. 2017, nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2018423.
[3] “Ericsson opens new Center of Excellence training facility in Texas as US focus on 5G increases.” Ericsson, February 8, 2019. www.ericsson.com/en/news/2019/2/ericsson-opens-new-center-of-excellence-training-facility-in-texas-as-focus-on-5g-in-the-united-states-increases?utm_source=EMagazine&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RC_MANA_RC-EMagazine_01062020
