Meet Our Founder:
Aynsley Szczesniak
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Endlessly energetic, I'm a proactive, motivated STEMinist and youth advocate empowering women of all career levels to thrive in STEM and to speak out for gender equality.
My STEMinism Story
My journey as a STEMinist truly began in 2021, when, after noticing the glaring lack of STEM-related communities for students at my high school, I founded The Einsteinettes, a club for women-identifying students eager to explore STEM. Little did I know that this would be the spark that catalyzed a whirlwind of two years as we built the Einsteinettes from a small, tight-knit group into a leader in our school community, establishing partnerships with other clubs and our elementary school teachers and truly setting an example for what it means to be a welcoming, inclusive community.
Along the way, I realized that there was a striking pattern in the realm of gender advocacy. So many organizations fight to get girls interested in STEM, and to expose girls to STEM career opportunities...but then there's never any follow-up. And that bugged me. Girls need to know about the hidden struggles that women face - from biases to micro aggressions to imposter syndrome to menstrual inequality - because these challenges aren't going away anytime soon, and if we truly want to see change in STEM, we need to start talking about what exactly needs to be changed. That became my mission: to shatter the stigmas and stereotypes that have silenced women's voices and suppressed women from advancing in STEM.
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Speak Out Sisterhood, therefore, is the ultimate embodiment of this mission. If we stand united, not only will we find support in a vibrant community of like-minded women, but also our collective call for change will carry much more power than any one voice alone. And as I continue my own journey as a STEMinist, I cannot wait to see how much I learn.