AiryCherry

According to the World Health Organization, 99% of people live in areas with unsafe air quality. Each year, outdoor particulate matter (PM) pollution contributes to 4,200,000 premature deaths, an increase in acid rain, expedited glacial melt, additional wildfires, and $8,100,000,000,000 in global economic losses. PM is particularly harmful to women, who are disproportionately impacted. One such is example is that women in areas with high PM experience preterm births, putting both the mother and child’s health at risk (Stockholm Environmental Institue, 2020). Another is that PM pollution leads to hormonal disorders, increased breast cancer rates, and even an increase in suicides for women in particular. Health problems lead to lower performance rates in school (Center for Disease Control, 2019), furthering the disparities women face in STEM education. Although this problem is present across the United States (particularly in urban areas), 89% of the people facing toxic air levels are from developing countries where STEM disparities are even more prominent. If we hope to truly address the STEM gap, the problem must be approached in an interdisciplinary way that takes environmental health concerns into account. At AiryCherry, we are working to capture PM pollution to improve the environment, health, and education outcomes of women around the world. Our first target customer group is local governments, who are facing tens of millions of dollars in sanctions if air quality standards are not met while simultaneously receiving millions in funding to meet healthy PM levels. AiryCherry has developed an MVP and is excited to launch this winter in Fairbanks, Alaska. However, we are facing major setbacks due to difficulties gaining funding and mentorship for all of the reasons MITSolve has identified in which women entrepreneurs struggle. We are applying for the MITSolve Gender Equity in STEM Challenge to receive funding for our female led venture plus much needed mentorship from Tiger Global to help us scale as rapidly as possible and make the world a better place for all.

The patent-pending AiryCherry scales down tried-and-true industrial-level technology to capture particulate matter (PM) pollution for one city block per day. In simple terms it pulls in polluted air, ionizes the PM (causing it to stick to the interior of the AiryCherry), and only releases clean air. The PM can then be safely disposed of, improving health, the environment, and the economy.

When visiting family at home, Priyanka’s face broke out in hives after riding on a motorbike for fifteen minutes. Daisy’s menstrual cycle lasts for weeks at a time, giving her painful cramps that often force her to call out of work and spend the day in bed. Patricia’s has a son with down syndrome that collapsed on his way to school and had to be flown from Alaska to Stanford Hospital to receive life saving medical care. Her husband stayed in Fairbanks to work, but Patricia left her job and relocated to the Bay Area. Each of these are true stories with one common denominator: particulate matter pollution. Unfortunately, there are no alternatives for women like Priyanka, Daisy, and Patricia. Priyanka’s family in India relies on diesel bikes to get to work as cars are too expensive; Daisy is low income and lives in Los Angeles with her parents to afford high living expensive; and Patrice’s community relies on residential woodburning to survive the -40F winters as other forms of heating are unreliable, difficult to acquire, and extremely expensive. At AiryCherry, we conducted hundreds of hours of community engagement to best understand our problem. These conversations have taken place through in a variety of ways – including the National Science Foundation funded University of Southern California and University of Alaska Fairbanks I-Corp programs, in person in Alaska and Los Angeles, casually in line for coffee on a specifically bad air quality day, and virtually for both new relationship forming and frequent follow ups. While the stories described above represent some of those that benefit, the government is out target customers. Areas like Fairbanks, Alaska are facing threats of tens of millions of dollars in sanctions for their particulate matter pollution levels. The Fairbanks North Star Borough is desperately searching for innovative solutions to stop pollution, but nothing on the market is able to fill the need. AiryCherry will be able to solve their problem for 5% of the costs Fairbanks has incurred attempting to stop particulate matter over the past five years. After extensive customer interviews, we pivoted our product from a private residential unit to a city planning essential in order to establish the best way of solving our problem. By working in synergy with existing solutions, we will ensure women like Priyanka, Daisy, and Patricia can live a more comfortable life that will allow them to have better health, increased school and job attendance, and allow their children to thrive (taking significant pressure off the hometaker gender role that often prevents women from exceling to the same level as men).

AiryCherry started through a year long University of Southern California course titled “Innovations in Engineering for Global Crisis.” The idea behind the class is to take the best and brightest students into communities experiencing unsolvable problems, communicate with people there, and design solutions to solve the problems. We focused on Fairbanks, Alaska – a city with only 30,000 people but ranked among the most polluted places in the United States. Our team conducted hundreds of hours of community engagement before designing our product. We then grew those relationships throughout our research and development process. These conversations led us to pivot our product two times in order to best match the needs of the problem, community, and market. Our connections in Fairbanks have become extremely fruitful, leading us to host an intern located in the city, participate in the University of Alaska Innovation Center for Entrepreneurship accelerator, and compete in the Arctic Innovation Competition. Engaging our community helped us with problem identification, product development, and funding acquisition. We also learned about the importance of Native Alaskan culture in Fairbanks. If granted this award, we hope to fund a Native Alaskan art competition to paint each AiryCherry in a way they feel reflects their community. Our interdisciplinary approach to community engagement is personal. Our founding team members included engineers, data scientists, filmmakers, and policy students who have come from some of the most polluted cities in the world, including Los Angeles, Beijing, and Hyderabad. We each witnessed, firsthand, the effects of smog deteriorating the health of our communities and the unprecedented environmental damages in our homelands. Clean air access should be a basic human right and AiryCherry is going to make that right a reality. We will continue to engage communities throughout our process, for the AiryCherry aims to make clean air the cherry on top of living in your neighborhood.

Thus far we built multiple AiryCherry prototypes, which have undergone two main forms of testing. The first is visual. By using incense, we are able to see the PM (or the black smoke from the incense) entirely dissipate by the time it passes through the AiryCherry. Our second test uses a basic Temtop Air Quality Monitor. We consistently saw a dramtic decrease in PM when the AiryCherry was on. However, we cannot accurately quantify the decrease due to a lack of sophistication of testing material. The PM level of incense maxes out the air quality monitor, but by the time the gas passes out of the AiryCherry we are able to see a reading. This signifies a dramatic reduction, but because the upper bound is unknown we cannot adequately measure the impact. If granted the MITSolve grant, we would use the funds to acquire more sophisticated materials. This summer we are participating in RevIthaca’s Rapid Prototyping Accelerator, which will allow us to move past the prototype phase. We plan to have 5 AiryCherries manufactured by August 4th to launch this Fall in low-income highly vulnerable communities. We would then use the MITSolve funds to scale, financing our supplies acquisition and manufacturing capabilities as well as maintenance and operations staff.

Participating in Tiger Global Impact Venture Support Program would be an incredible opportunity for AiryCherry. Firstly, we will leverage the Tiger Global’s software expertise to implement remote monitoring of the AiryCherry in our V2. By partnering with company’s in Tiger Global’s network, we will be able to outsource this trait of the AiryCherry, potentially also incorporating a remote on/off feature. The current model will be all manual in order to deploy as quickly as possible. However, we will need to do more customer discovery to ensure customers want these features, then will need to establish a business model for incorporating them. We will level Tiger Global advice and financial technology companies to discover te best form of achieving this. Once our V2 is complete with remote monitoring, we will be ready to scale. It’s essential we’re able to rapidly scale due to PM pollution being a cyclical problem. Tiger Global’s extensive network will allow us to expedite our timeline for recruiting customers, expanding our workforce, and finding manufacturing partners. AiryCherry has struggled with recruitment, and we believe tapping into Tiger Global’s network will allow us to acquire top talent. We also look forward to the personal and professional leadership coaching. As a woman in the entrepreneurship space, it has been quite difficult to find female mentors. I have received comments about what I wear to events and been called bossy for doing the actions my male counterparts recommended and do often. Navigating these circumstances are difficult, and in the past we were forced to cut off sexist mentors. The leadership training will let us better navigate these situations. Finally, we hope to use the MITSolve funding as follows: $75,000 will go to constructing the first 500 AiryCherries; $75,000 will focus on hiring local maintenance and manufacturing workforce, prioritizing an equitable gender split amongst employees & also funding our female in STEM internship program; $25,000 will go toward continued community engagement; $60,000 will go to salaries for the CEO and eventual CTO,;and $15,000 will go to a local art contest to decorate AiryCherries in order to improve community reception of our devices.

Since our inception, AiryCherry has been a community organization. Our team was out in Alaska talking to people for six months before we even decided to try and stop particulate matter pollution. We formed long lasting relationships with real people, and our team lead began to care deeply about the struggling folks. When the year-long course ended, the other five classmates went on to high paying jobs. Serena stayed decided to move back home with her parents and spend her time focusing on stopping PM. She simply couldn’t leave the issue behind. It wasn’t because of the environmental effects, health stats, or economic losses. She kept working because of the frequent texts she got asking “Any progress on your project?”, “Check out this opportunity!”, and “How can I help?”. 

Serena has always been a community-oriented person. She studied public policy in school, but pivoted to being a “hobbyist engineer” after frustrations with the lengthy timelines of policy-based solutions. Still, her policy background taught her the importance of empathizing with people to create meaningful change. With this as AiryCherry’s North Star, she was able to successfully navigate her team through two major product pivots inspired by community feedback. At AiryCherry, community engagement doesn’t just mean a one time tokenized conversation, but rather years-long relationships where community members have a real say in the future of our technology.

Serena is from the Los Angeles area, but from the NorthEast pocket of the County where the air is quite good. After relocating Downtown for University she was in smog every day. She noticed her menstrual cycles became more painful and her allergies worsened even when California flowers were not in bloom. Still, it was the personal connections to Alaskans that drove her to pursue a STEM project to help others. She believes that many women are motivated by their communities, and that if STEM because a visual catalyst for good then more women will get involved. 

Nothing on the market currently effectively addresses the deadly problem of PM pollution. Policy solutions work to stop future PM but can’t counteract the cyclical nature of PM, where increasing wildfires increase PM. Likewise, industrial solutions cannot capture airborne PM. Finally, outdoor air purifiers rely on HEPA filters, which are unsuitable for outdoor use due to the size range of airborne particulates. HEPA filters need to be replaced frequently and require a higher electricity input (up to 30 times more than the AiryCherry!). 

The patent-pending AiryCherry will reduce airborne particulate matter pollution creating clean health for both people and the environment. Our device combats air pollution by scaling down a tried and true industrial-level technology, purifying the air in three simple steps. First, air with deadly PM is pulled into the AiryCherry through a suction fan. The particulate is then ionized, separating toxins from the air. Finally, clean air is released back into the atmosphere allowing the environment to thrive. The PM is directed into a collection chamber, which is easily disposed of once a year. The industrial level technology runs at 99% efficiency for particulate removal, and we anticipate the AiryCherry will follow similarly. Our product is an adaptation of this technology for a personal, institutional, and public setting with appropriate dimensions of the same principles but different internal structures and designs to ensure high filtration efficiency. Furthermore, the AiryCherry is electricity powered but requires minimal energy costs. At a low power requirement of 50 watts of electricity, the minimal recurring cost is comparable to a single street light. 

The AiryCherry supports women in STEM in a much different way than other MITSolve solutions. It gives positive health benefits, allowing women to thrive, but even more crucial will expose women to how female innovators can use STEM to better their communities. The AiryCherry is not just a device that captures PM pollution – it is a way for others to see how women can solve the impossible through STEM.

In the next year we will establish a fund for a female STEM intern, conduct 130+ community engagement and customer discovery interviews through the National Science Foundation I-Corp and Venturel Propel, and deploy 10+ AiryCherries for our beta launch. In the next 5 years we plan to have $5,000,000 in revenue and secured contracts with the United Nations and USAID to launch in low income countries. We will use this revenue to establish a pitch competition for women in clean-tech working on STEM hardware ventures.

We will achieve our goals using the key point indicators we learned through VentureWells Pioneer Program:

Company Objective #1: Establish an AiryCherry internship program for women in STEM.

Key Result #1: Have at least one female-identifying stem intern beginning January 2024.

Activity #1: Apply to MITSolve for funding to give intern a fair wage.

Activity #2: Work closely with local universities beginning in Fairbanks, Alaska to find top female engineering candidates.

Key Resulty #2: Help the female intern move to a successful job in STEM.

Activity #1: Assist the intern in conducting informational interviews with successful women in STEM through the Tiger Global Network.

Company Objective #2: Conduct 130+ customer discovery interviews by Dec 2023.

Key Result #1: Conduct 30 customer discovery interviews through VentureWell Propel Program.

Activity 1: Attend in-person Propel workshop to strengthen interview skills & learn how to gain insights to identify product market fit.

Activity 2: Attend LaunchAK & conduct 30+ interviews with community members.

Key Result #2: Conduct 100 interviews through the National Science Foundation I-Corp program by Nov 2023

Activity 1: Work with UAF pro-bono grant writer to finalize and submit application by August 2023.

Activity 2: Travel to MENACW 2023 Oct 9-12 & LACCW 2023 23-27 Oct and conduct 100+ interviews with both air quality experts and community members.

Company Objective #3: Launch 10+ AiryCherries from February 2024 - July 2024.

Key Result #1: Make 10+ AiryCherries

Activity 1: Acquire a manufacturing space by end of November 2023 and manufacture first pilot batch by end of January 2024 

Key Result #2: Work with UAF for testing.

Activity 1: Use $5,000 in equipment funding to build a test rig to test prototypes in the lab and on-site.

Activity 2: Work with Peter from UAF to figure out academics to test with.

Company Objective #4: $5,000,000 in revenue by January 2028.

Key Result #1: Identify customers to purchase 8,500 AiryCherries.

Activity 1: Receive a long-term contract with Fairbanks to implement 1100 AiryCherries and cut 70-90% of the city’s PM pollution.

Activity 2: Develop existing relationships in Los Angeles and Hyderabad, India to find customers/problems elsewhere.

Key Result #2: Acquire funding to build 2,500 AiryCherries.

Activity 1: Apply for SBIR Grant.

Activity 2: Receive MITSolve funding.

Key Result #3: Manufacture & install 8,500 AiryCherries.

Activity 1: Talk with mentors to recruit talent with manufacturing expertise and establish a manufacturing process to ensure high-quality products.

Activity 2:  Establish sustainable supply chain processes.

Company Objective #5: Establish a pitch competition and professional development weekend for women-led STEM ventures that build clean-tech hardware by 2028.

Key Result #1: Secure a location and cosponsors.

Activity #1: Find universities to partner with and host the event.

Activity #2: Get businesses in that community to cosponsor the event.

Key Result #2: Create professional development workshops.

Activity 1: Work with MITSolve and Tiger Global to create professional development workshops to help women in STEM succeed.

Activity 2: Bring in successful female entrepreneurs to provide mentorship and individualized startup feedback.

Simply put, the AiryCherry is the only device on the market that will be able to rapidly collect PM, allowing women’s health to thrive. We will deploy an AiryCherry on each city block and purify 72,000 cubic meters of air per day. Our short and long term impacts are as follows:

Short Term: clean breathing, less asthma cases & other health stats, improved health for women, increased opportunities for women in cleantech through internship program.

Long Term: less climate change, trillions of lives saved, improved health for women, cycle of PM stopped, women exposed to impact-based STEM programs, increased opportunities for women in cleantech.

The AiryCherry will reduce airborne particulate matter (PM) pollution creating clean health for both people and the environment. Our device combats air pollution by scaling down a tried and true industrial-level technology, purifying the air in three simple steps. First, air with deadly PM is pulled into the AiryCherry through a suction fan. The particulate is then ionized, separating toxins from the air. Finally, clean air is released back into the atmosphere allowing the environment to thrive. The PM is directed into a collection chamber, which is easily disposed of once a year.  The industrial level technology runs at 99% efficiency for particulate removal, and we anticipate the AiryCherry will follow similarly. Our product is an adaptation of this technology for a personal, institutional, and public setting with appropriate dimensions of the same principles but different internal structures and designs to ensure high filtration efficiency. Furthermore, the AiryCherry is electricity powered but requires minimal energy costs. At a low power requirement of 50 watts of electricity, the minimal recurring cost is comparable to a single street light. Our team has been working with the UCLA Patent Clinic on a pro-bono basis for the past few months to submit our patent. Our technology has been designed hand-in-hand with the communities we aim to serve. We conducted hundreds of hours of community engagement and customer discovery, creating a growing network of industry experts, local government air quality departments, fire station captains, nonprofits, universities, and everyday passionate citizens such. From these conversations, we pivoted our product twice in order to best meet the needs of the market and problem. Because of our thorough and continued community engagement and technology based on a decades successful industrial solution, we are confident in our ability to make clean air a reality. The MITSolve and Tiger Global support program will help us outline our pathway to scale as quickly as possible, ensuring we focus on equitably distributing clean air solutions. 

Full-time staff is our CEO Serena Allen. We have 4 volunteer part-time engineers and a part-time finance intern. Our team mentors include academics, community members, and business experts.

We began community engagement for problem identification in August 2021 and settled on the problem of PM pollution in January 2022. We discovered our core technology in February 2022, and focused on residential wood-burning pollution. After a second Alaska customer discovery trip, we pivoted our residential product secondary features in August 2022. In December 2022 we returned to Alaska and reengaged with our connections, leading to the pivot to AiryCherry in January 2023. In total, we have been focused on our community’s need for nearly 2 years, particulate matter pollution 1.5 years, and the AiryCherry for six months.

We have an incredibly diverse team, with 5 cultures represented across our 6 team members. But to us, diversity goes beyond just marks on a paper. We’ve shared new experiences together like people seeing snow for the first time, learning to cook Mexican food, watching films in different languages, and learning to brew proper Chai. At AiryCherry diversity means enjoying both our range of professional interests and the fun cultural differences that make working on a team so lovely. Sadly, our lack of funding has been a major hurdle to adequately support inclusion, particularly on the basis of gender. We recently undertook a lengthy interview process to recruit a full time CTO and our final candidates were intelligent female engineers. Unfortunately, after three rounds of interviews, both candidates decided it was not feasible for them to join the team because our compensation was inadequate (we were offering $2,000 stipend per month for 3 days of work per week). Currently our CEO lives with her parents and has taken only $5,000 as a salary the entire time she has been working on AiryCherry. On top of this, we have had exploitative mentors that racially harassed and discriminated against women of color, causing our two additional female volunteers to move on to other positions. We immediately reported and cut out the mentor, and lost many opportunities because of it. The divide goes beyond just our team. At each competition we count the number of women in attendance, and throughout we have seen an average of 20% female representation. The divide is clear, with most of the male entrepreneurs having received hundreds of thousands in investments and nearly all female entrepreneurs having pitched dozens of times without a single call back. Breaking this glass ceiling is hard enough, but once you add in making a salary near the poverty line it is simply infeasible for qualified candidates to join our mission. Still, our passionate CEO remains persistent because of her relationships with those that are disproportionately impacted by PM pollution and are desperately looking for ways to better their air quality for their families. A competition like the MITSolve Gender Equity recognizes these disparities in STEM and entrepreneurship. Receiving the funding would allow us to adequately support a female leadership team, but the trainings would give us the skills required to truly succeed as technical entrepreneurs. Individualized leadership coaching will help us navigate challenges, community spaces will allows us to connect with like minded individuals, and resources finding partners will help us access much needed venture capital to scale. MITSolve will help us make clean air a reality by recognizing what makes women entrepreneurs unique and supporting us through our mission to achieve the impossible.

The AiryCherry helps local governments that have a problem meeting federal airborne particulate matter (PM) standards by capturing airborne particulate matter pollution using low energy consumption. We have verified our value proposition by conducting hundreds of hours of customer discovery in Fairbanks, Alaska – a place with only 30,000 people but consistently ranked one of the most polluted in America due to residential wood-burning. Nothing on the market currently effectively addresses the deadly problem of PM pollution. Policy solutions work to stop future PM but can’t counteract the cyclical nature of PM, where increasing wildfires increase PM. Likewise, industrial solutions cannot capture airborne PM. Fortunately, the AiryCherry will be able to work in synergy with existing to solutions to truly end the problem that is PM pollution. A final differentiator of the AiryCherry is that is does not rely on HEPA filters, which are unsuitable for outdoor use due to the size range of airborne particulates. HEPA filters need to be replaced frequently and require a higher electricity input (up to 30 times more than the AiryCherry!). Fairbanks has been awarded $20,000,000 in grants in the past five years to lower PM pollution. Still, they’ve been unsuccessful in reaching EPA compliance. If not met this year, Fairbanks will lose $37,000,000 in federal highway funding. Cities are desperately looking for innovative solutions for PM and ways to stop poor air quality without encroaching on citizen’s freedom. Fairbanks has spent the most money to get rid of residential woodburning stoves, but after 15 years and tens of millions of dollars spent doing the program, less than 20% of residents have opted in. The AiryCherry’s expected cost will be $575. We anticipate cutting 75% of all PM pollution in Fairbanks for less than $800,000. For Fairbanks, this is a small price to pay for the rapid purification of an entire city block. The city will have a minimal recurring cost for annual cleaning of the AiryCherries. The end users are all citizens, who will benefit by saving millions in a decrease of hospital bills and natural disaster damages, an added bonus to increasing the health of both people and the planet plus eliminating tariffs for cities. We will all gain a higher quality of life through AiryCherry and the cut in pollution will enable women’s health to thrive and therefore create a stronger capacity to succeed in education and STEM.

At each stage of our product development our funding will change. Currently, we are working with grant funding to complete our MVP. Of course, the most important funding source is our customers. This summer our customer waiting list will go live and we hope to leverage existing relationships to pursue a formal agreement. Once an AiryCherry is purchased and installed, there will be a monthly fee for air quality monitoring and any required cleaning (which will vary based on the amount of PM being produced in said month). After speaking with business advisors we learned this recurring revenue stream will not only be attractive to investors, but also ease our customers’ responsibilities. After launching our pilot, we will look for VC to rapidly scale. By 2025 we aim to have $1,500,000 in revenue – the equivalent of 2,500 AiryCherries installed. This amount will cut Fairbanks’s pollution to near zero and allow us to launch in our next target areas: Los Angeles, California. We plan to register with the General Services Administration so that we may launch in American cities rapidly, successfully helping not only the health and environment within our home country but also breaking into the country’s $2,400,000,000 market size. Next, we will leverage existing relationships in Hyderabad, India to launch internationally. After our international pilot, we will pursue funding from USAID to manufacture and deploy more rapidly. This will be our entry point for the $101,000,000,000 global market, and eventual pathway to increasing women’s health and educational outcomes, stopping millions of premature deaths, helping the environment.

Our past year and a half of progress would not have been possible without our range of supporters, who provided us with mentorship, legal services, travel, and $49,350 in nondilutive funding. USC set the foundation for our success, sponsoring two community engagement and customer discovery trips to Alaska and providing $3,000 in product development funding. After its completion, CEO Serena Allen completed the Blackstone LaunchPad for Future Founders, which provided a $5,000 grant and workshops to better understand the ins and outs of running a company. We competed in multiple competitions throughout this time, including placing as a USC Min Family Challenge finalist, MITSolve semi-finalist, and Wood Heater Design Competition finalist. All of these programs were done with our pre-pivot product the Chimney Cherry (which focused solely on residential wood-burning pollution). Then, we were sponsored by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the NSF I-Corp program to conduct additional customer discovery in Fairbanks, supported by a $4,500 stipend. Through these trips, we’ve conducted hundreds of hours of user interviews and made strategic partnerships in Fairbanks with organizations like the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC) and UAF Alaska Innovation Center for Entrepreneurship. CCHRC funded an intern for our team in fall 2022 who brought our device to the attention of the Department of Energy. After many conversations we responded to community needs by pivoting to the AiryCherry, which led us to compete in the prestigious ASUio competition. Our post-pivot traction has been explosive. We were accepted into the VentureWell Pioneer for E-Teams Program ($5,000 + business training workshops), USC ABC ($250 + business workshops and customer discovery), and received a USC Catalyst Microgrant ($5,000). We are proud to have recently competed in the Arctic Innovation Competition, where we won first place in the Main Division, the Artic Kicker Award, the Fan Favorite Award, and a travel stipend to compete live in Fairbanks (totaling $18,600). Additionally, both the USC Small Business Clinic and UCLA Patent Clinic took on our company pro-bono to support our air purification mission by registering us as a C-Corporation and filing our first patent. This summer we will participate in the RevIthaca Hardware Accelerator in partnership with Cornell University to manufacture our first AiryCherries with support from engineers plus an $8,000 grant. We will also have access to a pro-bono grant writer, who will help us apply for additional NSF funding including the I-Corp Program and SBIR grants. Of course AiryCherry recognizes out most important funding source: customers. We are excited to say this summer our customer waiting list will go live, with interest already expressed by parties in Fairbanks and Los Angeles. With less than $50,000 AiryCherry developed proof-of-concepts, an MVP, recruited interns and volunteers, and conducted hundreds of hours of customer discovery. $250,000 in MITSolve funding would exponentially increase our timeline by allowing our female CEO finally go full time, recruiting a full-time technical lead, and creating women in STEM empowerment programs.