Welcome Back — We Never Left, We Were Building

The Black Girls Do Engineer Podcast is back.

In this welcome-back episode, founder and CEO Kara Branch shares what really happened during the quiet season—why the mic went silent, how the mission never stopped, and what it took to build BGDE with intention, clarity, and peace.

This conversation is about growth without burnout, leadership without apology, and staying rooted in community while building something sustainable. Kara reflects on lessons learned, how BGDE has evolved, and what this next chapter looks like for girls, families, and the future of STEM.

Whether you’ve been part of the BGDE community for years or you’re listening for the first time, this episode invites you back into the work—stronger, clearer, and ready for what’s next.

Press play and let’s talk about building in the quiet.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome Back And Why We Paused
• 1:38 2025 Impact By The Numbers
• 2:56 DEI Headwinds And Community Need
• 4:39 Pivoting Through Crises And Showing Up
• 6:10 Leadership Lessons And Burnout
• 8:18 Rebuilding A Sustainable Path
• 10:16 From Strategy To Innovation
• 11:12 Introducing The STEM XS Platform
• 12:01 Going National: Houston, Brooklyn, Detroit
• 13:06 Collegiate Chapters And Next Steps
• 14:00 How To Get Involved And Stay Connected

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:57

The Black Girls Do Engineer podcast. I'm Cara Branch, engineer and founder and CEO of Black Girls Do Engineer. If you've been rocking with us for a while, thank you for your patience. And if you're new here, welcome to the community. We took a pause from the mic, but we never paused the mission. We were building, learning, and growing quietly. This episode is about what happened in that quiet season, why BGDE still matters in 2026, and what this next chapter looks like for our girls, our families, and our future. Let's talk. So, first let's talk about why the mic went quiet, but the work didn't. So we made a lot of impact in 2025. We impacted over 2,500 girls nationally. We expanded to new cities. We were on the ground consistently. We hosted over 20 plus events alone last year for the youth. We even launched black boys do engineer. So we were super busy, but we were working a ton. Really, because we had to figure out strategy, what the future looked like for black girls to engineer, and how to become sustainable. 2025 was tough for so many people. I think everybody knew 2025 was life. And so we were all just trying to stay afloat with DEI ending, with the mass layoffs happening. And for Black Girls New Engineer, we weren't new to challenges, but we had to restrategize because we learned yet again, our community needs us more than they ever did before. We learned it a couple of times during our time here, Black Girls New Engineer. We learned that during COVID, where we had to readjust less than two weeks to take our platform virtually, because the girls in our community needed us so much more at that time. We started to understand that during the floods and hurricanes we were experiencing here in Houston, how we had to continue to rally around our community and provide them this our trainings because it mattered so much to put those smiles on our community faces to support them, right? That's what we are on the ground and do. And 2025 taught us that we had to continue to be on the ground for our community and show up for them, no matter what changes were being implemented, that we had to be on the ground. So we spent 2025 on the plane, going from city to city and hosting a ton of events around all the future items of stuff. And so we went silent because we had to get on the ground, we had to restrategize, and we had to make sure we were growing and sustainable for many, many years to come, right? So that's why we went quiet, but we were doing the work. And so, but we're back now. And we wanted to talk about a little bit more about what changed, right, during that quiet season. So a lot changed for Black Girls to Engineer, and a lot was learned. I feel like you can't make changes unless you learn. So we have to learn a lot of lessons in leadership to be able to transform from being quiet to being effective to being the best that we can be for the girls in our community. And I had to start with myself. One of my biggest lessons I learned personally was that you cannot fill up others from an empty cup. And saying that, I mean that I had to take a lot of time to sit down and reflect to be able to pick myself up to do and continue on this work. This is not easy. A lot of times with our programming, making these large numbers of impact and doing all that we do is from a very, very small MIT team. I literally spent the whole last year working just with myself and my tech innovation lead. And that's all we had. So it was a lot. I've done a lot of first of their kind projects, and those can weigh a lot on you as well. But I can say being a CEO was very, very much so much tougher than that. And when you don't have a playbook or come from a family line of other CEOs that you can learn or have those mentors, you gotta figure it out a lot of times by yourself. And so I knew for sure the thing that kept me going and kept the smile on my face was showing up in those rooms with the youth that I work with in every city each day. I've had the beauty to go to so many cities and so many different neighborhoods and serve so many girls who are from communities like myself. If you've been rocking with us from the beginning, you know I come from an underserved community, single-parent household, and I was able to have and carry my passion for love of learning to get myself to a chemical engineering degree and many, many more degrees after that because I love to learn. So that was my push and motivation to get to better for me and not just myself now, but my family as well. But I got to go into those communities and inspire, and it felt so good leaving out of those rooms with girls saying, I'm gonna build this, I'm gonna do this, this is gonna be my business. That was the biggest, biggest impact that anyone who runs these types of nonprofits of service work could ever feel. So I was showing up in those places, in spaces where children may have felt alone or didn't have that encouragement. I got to do that in 2025 and change a lot of lives still. So I had to take time with myself to make sure when I was not in those spaces of working with youth, I could still carry that smile and excitement. And so I spent a lot of 2025 doing that. And boy, do I feel good. I feel really good. I miss every day is a work in progress, but I have implemented so many beautiful learnings for myself to be able to make sure I'm the best self. So a lot around leadership and learning. To be a great effective leader, you just have to be feeling good to yourself right to mentor others. You gotta be able to have a good mental to be able to give your guidance. And so I spend 2025 doing a lot, a lot for myself. So I am a feeling good and ready to go into this year and just be always feeling good or using the tools to make sure that I do. That's been something that I've always worked on for many, many years, making sure we were still always future-driven, future focused. But I can most definitely say I have figured it out with the help of so many greats around me that have been working with me on this mold and mighty team, but they build us to figure out what is our path forward as Black Girls Do Engineer. And we figured that out. I'll tell you a little bit about that. Once I tell you, we could change during that quiet season, right? And how we were gonna evolve. Like, how were we going to evolve into what I always have been able to do in my career, and that is as an innovator? What makes us different? Uh staying on our own path and lane, like all those things were important to me. And so I spent a lot of time in our quiet season, really just strategizing, right? Everyone was strategizing in 2025. And so to really make sure you keep yourself on course, keep yourself afloat, just to survive. I feel like 2025 was just that a year of how to survive. So it took a lot of time of strategizing, being on the ground, seeing what works doesn't work. Entrepreneurs out there, you feel me, you know what that means. And coming back to the table with the path forward, and and we're here. And let's talk about what that path forward is. So, what's next for us, right? What did all that hard work, all that self-healing, all that great stuff do for black girls to engineer? Um, it made us into a top leader in training and workforce development. That's what it did. A lot of beautiful things have come out of that time, one of them being is our own learning management system, STEM X's. We've been working on STEM XS, my tech innovation lead Ricky, my spouse. I work on my spouse. 20 packets about how to do that. Comment, I'll give you one. So Ricky's my spouse, and we work very closely together. And we developed a tool called STEM XS. It's a beautiful tool. Every time I see it functioning, and all of our curriculum we developed and all of our trainings and all of our every greatness part of it that we put into it, as you can hear, I'm very excited about it. I get super, super excited every day about what this is going to do for our community. We've taken all of our learnings and put it into the system, and it's going to be something great in 2026. We started doing some great pilots in 2025. My girls who was in the room with me, they know uh what was up. So now we are really launching it. So STEM Access is coming. Follow us on social media at Black Rollstuhl Engineer on Instagram, LinkedIn, Meta, you know, make sure you follow follow me at Black Girl Stow Engineer so you can know when it hits, when it lands, how you can use this platform at home. Other things that we were developing was becoming a national org. We have done it. We are now located not just only in Houston, Texas, but in Brooklyn, New York. And announced you're listening to this podcast, we're lunching in Detroit. Uh, we spent some time in Detroit last year. Love what Detroit is building to be. Wonderful tech hub. We uh stepped into Detroit. People just signed up like crazy. The partnerships there were just fantastic, and we're there. So we are now having our Midwest headquarters in Detroit. So we're looking forward to doing more service work there and continue to expand. We also have Black Girls Do Engineer Collegiate chapters that are now popping up in universities, and so we're not just serving the youths at K through 12, right? College students, you get to become those alumni out of our programming and go into a Black Girls Do Engineer chapter on your campus. So a lot of training, a lot of workshops, Stimx is lunch, we're national. What is our vision, right? Where are we heading in 2026? Well, first of all, you gotta follow us on social media to know. But a lot of great things are in development. So the mic went quiet. The mic is now not quiet, but we still are moving quietly. But a lot is in the works, it is planned, it is done. We have some great supporters behind us for our visions, and so just stay tuned to learn more about any upcoming events near you, or how you can get involved with Black Girls Do Engineer. Do visit us on our website at www.blackgirlsdoengineer.org, or you can email us directly at info at blackgirlsdoengineer.org. It feels so good to be back. Stay tuned for the next episode.