This week my guest is Stephanie Hein, CEO of Maker Girl – an organization founded in a social entrepreneurship class at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where two young women were empowered by the question "What bothers you?" Motivated by their past experiences, MakerGirl was created to inspire young girls to pursue STEM fields through 3D printing sessions.

The Maker Girl Story: Two diverse, young women began a Social Entrepreneurship class at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Little did they know, they would start a movement that would impact the life trajectories of young girls and women in their dreams for a creating a promising future. Mid-way into the semester, they were posed and challenged with a simple question, “What bothers you?” Group member Julia Haried quickly drew from her past research about the lack of women in C-suite positions. Their conversation moved to, “Why is that?” and “What can we do to change these issues?”

From this inspiration, Engele and Haried created MakerGirl--a mission driven program about more than 3D printing. MakerGirl seeks to inspire young girls to be active in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and to continue to say “Yes!” to future challenges by offering design and 3D printing workshops.

Check them out at: https://makergirl.us/

About Stephanie: Stephanie is a graduate of Educational Studies Master’s program at the University of Michigan as well as a former student-athlete and Molecular Biology major at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She gained educational programming experience at her former position at Toyology Toys. Hein served as MakerGirl’s Engagement Director in 2016 and assisted raising over $30,000 through a Kickstarter campaign and organized #MakerGirlGoesMobile, a 10,000 mile cross-country road trip that brought 3D printing sessions to over 1,000 girls in rural and underserved communities across the country.