Need and a local nonprofit
dedicated to helping create the
next generation of tech leaders.
Joining us now. They provide stem
and business education programs.
This is for girls and underserved students.
And we have the executive
Director joining us here.
Greater than tech.
Jasmine will floor.
Hey, good to
see you. Hi. Good morning.
Thanks for having me.
I'm glad you're here.
Greater than tech.
So tell us what this is all about.
What's kind of your mission?
Yes. So greater than tech is all
about making the uncommon common.
And by that, we mean that we're teaching.
Students to not only be
engineers and scientists,
but also entrepreneurs and patent owners.
We teach them stem and entrepreneurship.
I myself am a businesswoman and
I have an engineering degree,
and I realize how important it is
for engineers to understand the
real world applicability of STEM.
I love it. And you know,
you see a lot more younger
people involved in stem.
I've seen it at least among
some of my neighbors.
For example, they're always
doing robots in the garage,
which is really
cool. You brought an example
of when it's starting at a
younger age. Yeah, right.
Absolutely, yes.
So we start at middle school.
We had middle school students this year
do a Community robotics program and we
call it that because we want students
to not only learn about the robots,
but be able to articulate their ideas
on what robots can do in the future.
So this is an example of one
of the student teams.
We had 12 year old students
came up with the robot idea to
serve patients in hospitals.
They want this robot to be able
to help doctors and nurses. So
this could like roll. Absolutely. Yeah.
Hospital, that's brilliant.
I mean, I don't even know what any
of these things do, but these 12
year olds can teach me. They could.
Yeah, really great. They learned
it in six weeks.
That's awesome. That's really important
stuff because, I mean, to understand
how things work,
the way they work, right,
didn't really help shape our future.
Explain that. I mean,
you studied engineering.
You know how much it
plays in our daily life?
Absolutely. The thing is,
stem is so important.
It's so good for students to learn
the hard skills, the coding.
The building, but like we want them
to see how it actually relates.
So not only are they learning
all these great skills,
but also their ideas are coming to life.
We asked them how would they use robots
to change a social impact issue and they
came up with all these brilliant ideas.
And I know if I was their age and
I knew a little bit about how stem
could be applicable to the real world,
I always joke and say maybe I
would have been Elon Musk by now.
So giving them the ability to
actually learn how to use their.
Ideas for tech is what greater than tech
is all about? I mean, to know
that you can at any age,
really impact your society by,
yeah, learning all of these skills,
that's really cool.
So explain what greater than tech now does.
You were saying during commercial break,
you go to schools.
Yes. So we go to schools for
our Community robotics program.
We go to schools that don't have robotics.
And we also do our programs with other
nonprofits and on college campuses.
So our latest program was Girl
meets additive manufacturing,
and that's for high school.
Girls, we teach high school girls,
emerging technology and entrepreneurship.
So we do those programs on college campuses.
We partner with USD for that one specifically
and for girls too. I mean,
is that kind of the main goal here,
girls and an underserved community?
Yeah. So we started with girls,
my cofounder and I,
doctor Brittany Wheeler,
both black women in STEM.
So there's not a lot of
women in that space with us.
So we wanted to create a environment
where girls feel comfortable
learning stem and see themselves
in role models like Doctor Wheeler.
Yeah. And to see that, you know,
this isn't really life changing.
You can change the community you live in.
I think that's the really,
absolutely message.
You don't hear that as often when
you're in some of those classes.
So it's nice that you're there
introducing that to them. Thank
you. Yes. We want them to know that they
can create opportunities for others.
That's what we really want to see.
Are you looking for more
people to participate?
Yes, absolutely. So we wanna do our
Community robotics program in 2023
and we're looking to serve 100 and.
50 students OK we're looking for volunteers,
people who like stem know how to
tinker with robots like students,
and also could be speakers and role models.
So looking for volunteers,
looking for schools to partner with
and also looking for donations
as per usual. And we just put up
that QR code so that's a way to access.
How else can people find you?
So you could find us at
www.greaterthantech.org and
that's everything. You can find.
All of our stuff.
We have Instagram greater than tech dot SD.
And LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
All greater than text.
Thank you for the work you're doing.
Thanks for coming on this morning.
Thank you for having me.