Invest in Their Future Now: Why STEM Training Can’t Wait

The future is not waiting—and neither can we.

In this episode, Kara Branch breaks down why investing in STEM training for our children is no longer optional, but essential. As technology continues to reshape industries and redefine careers, the gap between those who are prepared and those who are not is growing fast.

This conversation goes beyond inspiration and gets into the reality: early exposure builds confidence, but consistent training builds readiness. With real data and practical insight, Kara explains why waiting until high school—or even college—is already too late for many students to compete in today’s workforce.

From the rise of AI and automation to the importance of hands-on learning and skill-building, this episode challenges parents, educators, and communities to think differently about how we prepare the next generation.

Because here’s the truth: when we invest early, we create access, confidence, and opportunity. When we wait, we risk our children being left behind.

🎧 Press play and start investing in their future—now.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Welcome back to Black Girls Do Engineer Podcast. I'm Cara Branch, chemical engineer and founder and CEO of Black Girls Do Engineer. Today we're talking about something that every parent, educator, and community leader needs to hear. Investing in our children's STEM training is no longer optional. It is necessary. We are living in a time where technology is moving fast, industries are shifting, and the skills required for success are changing in real time. And the truth is, the children who are exposed early, train consistently, and support it intentionally will have access to opportunities that others simply won't. This episode is about why STEM investment matters, what the data tells us, and what we need to start doing now to make sure our children are prepared, not playing catch up. Let's get into it. So this conversation is very important to me. As someone who leads a STEM organization, where we host multiple trainings, workshops for the youth throughout the year. And we really want parents to understand that this is an investment into your children's future and the importance, as we already talked about, the importance of being trained by the right people in this area, but also understanding that this investment is something like me as a parent, I always tell my kids, I'm gonna invest in you to get a return on my investment, right? So looking at it from that model and understanding the need and the importance of taking these chances. A lot of STEM programming, yes, can be expensive. Our pricing is really not where it should be. I've had this conversation over the years. I do a lot of analysis around costs, and our programming is below what the average price is for a lot of stuff that we offer because we want people to be able to have access at a rate that they can afford. Affordability is very important to us. But STEM, STEM can be costly. I want people to understand it's not just costly because of the things your children are being exposed to, like the lessons that they're being taught. STEM equipment is very costly to operate programming. I can speak from being a founder and having to create curriculum. That can be very costly for you or your staffing's time. There's a lot of factors that play into this cost. But even with all those factors, I know we here Black Girls do engineer really try to keep our costs down as much as we can to give you the highest quality of trainings. So I do want to talk about this because I'm a parent and I would not tell my parents to do something that I don't do myself as a mom who was raising three daughters. Also, you have to make these investments. And the main reason being the jobs. The jobs are changing fast. We can wake up every day and just turn on the TV and see how things are moving, how data centers are being built in several places, how the jobs have evolved from just our own experiences as working parents and educators as you're teaching. The curriculum is changing. You're having to modify things because of where the future is headed. So the job markets are changing and very fast. By 2030, up to 30% of the current work hours could be automated. 2030 is not far from now. So, as you all see from all of the tools we've used on our daily life, that automation is a huge part of it. And this is where that investment comes into play because you want to be able to be the ones behind this. We talked about this as well in past episodes, where you don't want to be just a user, right? You want to know how to be behind the technology. And that is important when you're making this investment into your children. Now, I can tell you as a STEM professional myself, I make investments into my children and I continuously make investments into myself because I have to continuously upskill myself to be able to not just train the future of STEM leaders, but also I'm a learner. I have to keep myself current. I am an innovator. I love to know what is happening now or what's been in development. And so I invest into myself around these areas as well, as well as my children. So this is something that is something I choose to do consistently, and I see the reward within my skill development and as well as in my children's growth. STEM jobs are growing two times faster than non-STEM jobs. That's something else I want to talk about. Again, we can wake up and see this. And if you are not seeing this, you may need to stop and take a break and spend some time. This is hard for me to say because I have been working on limiting my screen time. I really can't really push you to limit your screen time until you, you know, we all know how hard that can be. But if you want to utilize your screen time, just let's start looking at tech trends, the market, job market, or tech. That is my advice to you. Do some research. I research by the internet, of course. It's the best way that we do it now, but I am not against books, articles, reading journals in my hand. I have several books that I continue to read in hand, and and and you all know I love technical articles. It may not be your thing, but try to pick something out of what you are researching to connect with you because this is not something that can be ignored. I say that a lot, but to be honest with you, I've been saying this for over five years, and the shift is continuing whether we want to take the time to do the work or not. So it's important to understand that these jobs are growing two times faster. 97 million new roles in AI, tech, and data are projected. That's a lot of jobs. So that alone tells you that this is a growing market. And if you're not comfortable with this, and I can tell you, many people are not comfortable with them. They don't understand it, they don't know what it is. As an engineer, people have no clue. Many people that I meet first, people have no clue what engineering actually is outside of the fact that I'm typically the first black chemical engineer many people meet that I engage with. And so I decided just that moment alone, I have to spend a lot of time educating people on what engineering is. If you are not familiar with these terms, again, we have to use our resources. We have to do research, we have to look it up. We spend a lot of good time introducing it to the youth and all the possible pathways, but you have to spend the time to do the work on your own to understand these things. As well as if you don't feel equipped enough. So, you know, the future workforce is not waiting for our children to be ready. If we don't invest early, they're gonna enter into the workforce behind. They'll lack exposure to high growth careers, and they'll miss opportunity. They didn't even know existed. So the job market is one of the driving forces of why you need to be investing into STEM education, learning, trainings, workshops for your children, books, whatever you can place in their minds and in their hands to get their minds ready for this workforce. I'm going to encourage you to do so. You can't prepare late for a future that's already here. It's here. So it's not about when anymore. It's here and it's been here for quite some time. So, as I stated in many of my past episodes, if you have not listened, I encourage you to go back and listen. We have to get ready. It's no longer an option, it's necessary. So, early exposure, it builds that confidence and that confidence drive outcomes. So, this is most definitely feels in the STEM field where it involves a lot of mathematics, science. That is normally the top two things that's involved in this. I always tell my daughters they laugh because I tell them I've taken like every science, every math, and they are wowed by that. And so it's a lot of facts. I encourage people to fall in love with math. I always believe it's how it's taught to you. And I'm grateful in college. I've had a great math professor who taught me calculus in a way where I could just do it in my head without a calculator because it was taught so really well to me. So it's important that I mean as a parent, I do this as well. If you feel not as well as you want to as a math student or in science, if you want to be better, we all know tutoring is option. People are still tutoring. I have enrolled my children in tutoring where I've seen that there were some gaps, or just to give them that confidence as they go out to want to do these films, right? But you have to make sure that they're getting prepared really early to have that confidence to be able to go and grow their technical ability before they even get to college to do these skills. So confidence most definitely comes from resources, but it comes from the professionals. I had a parent say to me just this week, I'm trusting you. I don't know a lot about this, but I'm trusting your capability to do this for my child. And I'm excited about what's going to come out of this. And that's what we're here for, to be those STEM professionals that hold these technical degrees, multiple certifications, building this based on real life experiences, to be able to give your children well-rounded STEM exposure and getting them to grow in this space. So if you don't have that comfort level, you need to find that uh individual who can do it for you again. We have to make these investments, and you have to start early. If you start early with STEM learning, it increases long-term persistence by up to 40%. So I can't tell you enough how I've seen not just this data from doing my understanding of this work to make sure that my programming is successful, but as real life scenarios, I've watched many girls in my program start very young who are STEM professionals today, or they're in college, and you've heard some of their stories on past podcast episodes. So this all relates back to each other. So if you haven't heard their stories, please go check it out because they are phenomenal. Not just scholars in their right, but they have tons of schools to choose from. The scholarships are through the roof, very confident in their space, very understanding of what they want to do and where they want to go because of its programming. And they started very young with me. So it's not something that you can just do one time and walk away from. You don't do yourself any justice. My outlook on exposure is this if you didn't like it, that's fine. Let's find you what you do like, let's keep trying stuff until you get to what you like. Okay. And that's my motto when I'm working with the youth, and I want Paris' motto to be that as well. So it's not just about skill, it's about, you know, belief. You have to believe you can do it, and that a lot of times comes with having that confidence. You want your children to be to be able to see themselves and STEM, build things with their hands. I love to do hands-on activities, you have to understand your learning style, and a lot of people like to do hands-on learning. Some people are visual. There's a lot of different learning styles. So, in order to be able to really understand your learning style, you have to get that exposure right as well. And you want your children to be able to solve those real problems. They start to believe they can do this when they have all of these things in their hand, when they're doing a good job in their build, when they're seeing their peers, wrote them on. So confidence is built through exposure, not expectation. So you want to be make sure that you're placing your kids in things that most of them feel uncomfortable with getting because they've never done it before. But if you continuously keep placing them in those environments, they will understand the skills like many things that we do in life, right? That's how life works. You'll start understanding it more, and you'll become that expert in it, and that's our goal. And then that confidence just bounces off of them as a glow as in radiance. So it's a beautiful thing. So it just bounces off of them. Now let's talk about the investment. And and then I want to dive into this. So we talked about it's important to do it, but what it can do once you make those investments. So investments can change those outcomes, not just access. So I know I'm appearing, I'm right there with everybody. There's a billion camps, and it's like there's just more and more. It's a very overwhelming process. It's a ton of training. There's you, you can, you can go, I feel like anywhere and get some type of STEM exposure now. It has grown significantly since I started. It's a very overwhelming process, a process that starts for many parents. Like you start really analyzing what you want your kids to do. Like, I start in January, but I was talking to a friend of mine, and she was like, they were starting in December, and that just blew my mind. So a lot of people start early with building those pathways of what they're gonna place their kids into. I encourage you to really research the offerings to see how far your money is going to go. I can give you some examples. Um I have a future dermatologist over here. You all heard her story. There's not a lot of dermatologists that look like her in this world for one. And so I'm rooting her on, and I know she's gonna do great, mostly because her ability and that she's been training for this since she was nine years old, right? And so, and her confidence that she's learned over the years and the magnificent women in the space that she's met. But that's one part, but just like you what I'm asking you all to do, I must do for her. And and and these amazing camps, I have researched a ton, and there's a billion amazing medical camps out there that's starting at about$2,000. Okay. And so sometimes those prices can be scary. Sometimes those prices are just not in the budget. This is why we plan for those. We typically in life plan for things that we care about or want to do. And we we put a budget together to to accomplish those things. And this is how you have to treat this. This is something that's going to build your child for what they love, to understand what they love, get trained and exposure from the amazing staff. In this case, it would be the professors on site who are medical professionals coming back. I mean, there's so much to go into, but you really don't know what you're gonna get into. You sit down and research it. So you really spend some time. If you're very ever unclear on something, you go ask those questions to make sure you're clear. But there's and also the benefit of for me, my questions were first, I had to digest how much it may cost. So I understand how parents could feel. But I looked at my daughter and I said, she can never really understand what that day in the life looks like, and what that curriculum could be as she's on her medicine journey, and what that feel of the environment of some of the schools she may want to go to can really be like. And we talk about a lot about what can set her apart as she's about to start her college application part process. So thinking about all those things, thinking about how we do a lot of things around the summer around what we do with the org. And she does a lot of great volunteering and give back for that. But thinking about how can I give her something outside of what she's always done to do and feel her time. And she's done a lot of other camps, but like, you know, wanting to give her something more about which around what she wants to be and finding those opportunities. Because the last thing I want for her to get into this amazing program and look at me and be like, oh, I'm not really interested in that anymore. And that happens. That's why exposure is important. So this is me thinking about like what other resources, how many things can I get in front of her? What is she gonna enjoy to do? And what is going to be the outcome? Is she gonna get a certification from this? Is she gonna be able to build on this? Like, those are things I ask myself before making the investments. And then after having much conversation with her and understanding her commitment level, her comfort, and if this is aligned with her goals for herself, then mom and dad's gonna make that investment. And I can tell you from being on the other end of it and people investing, like their children fall in love with it, their kids know exactly what they want to do in and past podcasts, episodes. It's many stories from alumni of ours. Who said it was because of this camp, it was because of this person I met that I know what I want to do. That's the best feeling in the world, especially as a parent, when your child is secure and confident in what they want to do, and then they just continue to wow you getting there and they're excited about their learnings. And so that is all the factors I consider. And I invest. And it can be really expensive, but if you again put little tricklets of funding to the side, we save for what we want to do, but we have to also save for what needs to be done. And this is probably that need to be done bucket. So let's, you know, start preparing ahead of time. Because a lot of these programs close very out early in Q1 of each year. So and they start filling up very fast. I say this quite often with our programming when we release up until people do not sign, try to sign up a month prior to the event. Nine times times out of ten with us, it's already booked. Our events filled up very, very fast. And we also limited our spaces because we care about the connections and making sure no one's left behind. And our program is very, very high quality. So we are very like in high demand because of the way our work is done, and the and we have that 95% retention. So majority of the same girls come back time and time, no matter what city we go to. So you got to get on this for sure early because they fill up fast. High quality stuff is going to fill up fast. So that's how I take the approach of my children. Students who have that access to those structures and programs, they show higher college enrollment and career readiness. So a lot of times, again, from that growing up in STEM environments and that confidence, they're going to be really ready for college. They're going to be ready to go into their careers. They're going to be spot on knowing. That's what I like to do. That's what I don't like to do. This is the classes I'm going to recommend. And they a lot of them become mentors as soon as high school to the youth under them. I see that time and time again with coaching them because they're so equipped for this. Like many girls I've worked with by ninth grade, they're like these butterflies that's just flying into their coursework. Very goal-driven. They are looking for colleges that they want to go to very early senior years about scholarships, acceptance, early acceptance, and getting these tours. They start doing that actually before their senior year of high school. And by the time it's time to go to college, they're ready to go. And they have college credits under their belt already. So this is what that investment can turn into. I really want you to get you to the point to not think about whoo the high cost. I want you to be like planning ahead of time for this cost and making sure if you're paying high costs, you are investing it into where it needs to go to. So exposure is just not enough. We spent the first five years of our program heavily focused on exposure. We have most definitely transitioned into our next phase, and now we're just training, training, training. And that is what's making the difference. Because a lot of girls are like, hey, I know I like this. They're telling their parents, sign me up, right? A lot of times we do still have those exposure moments because we do have girls who maybe are trying this for the first time. So we make sure our environment is well rounded to hand or whatever we encounter wherever you are in your space. But that real investment, it looks like hands-on programs, right? It looks like mentorship, it looks like consistency, it looks like skill building over time. This is what investment into your children looks like. And all four of those things you're gonna get when Black Girls do engineer programming. And when you're making these investments, these are some of those questions you want to ask. Is it gonna be hands-on? What does the mentorship look like? How consistent over time do my child need to be a part of this to grow? What does skill building look like over time? These are questions you should be asking. Exposure, it introduces the idea, but training is going to prepare them for the opportunity. So prepare for these investments, but these investments is needed. They do become a part of your life as your kids are on this STEM journey. These are things you're gonna have to invest in. And what you invest in for one child may look different for your next your next child because everybody's journey looked different. But it's up to you to step out, make that first investment to get that exposure, to get that direction, to understand your children's journey a little bit better. So you can start planning so that you can make sure each one of your kids are prepared. And I have three. So I spent a lot of time doing this outside of running my programming for youth everywhere because I want to do this for as many youth as I possibly can to help them on their journey as well. It's very important to me because this is something that changed my life to become a STEM professional. You know, I come from an underserved community. I was raised by a single parent. My mom truly could not afford these things. But I can tell you, if an opportunity came through her, and a lot of times it wasn't from our environment, it would be from like word of mouth when she would meet people who may have a different course of life than we were living. And they would tell her, here's the opportunity, maybe you should look into it. And then that was very slum to none. But I give my mom kudos for trying to put me into something, anything that she could, even though she didn't have a lot of directions for people. You know, my story was people always told my mama was super smart, but never told her what to do with her smart daughter. She didn't have a lot of direction around like what I can be from a STEM perspective. That was not even something they talked about, I don't think, during our time, as far as the word STEM. But I do feel like people could have said, Oh, your daughter's uh way ahead in her chemistry courses, or she's excelling in mathematics. And have you ever thought about this degree path? Or your child, does she even want to go to college? You know, these questions were not asked to my mom, but she did the best that she could with the minimum resources she had to try to find something for her children to be doing, whether that was a simple walk to the library to get a book. I mean, those things are still life-changing. So you have to find some type of way to make these investments. So I'll leave you with that. Make the investments, ask the questions, and watch your children stem the pathway blossom. I also want to leave you with this investing in our children's DEM education is not just about careers, it's about access, confidence, and long-term opportunity. The world is changing fast, and the children who are prepared will walk into that future ready. The ones who aren't will spend time trying to catch up. So, whether you're a parent, educator, or a community leader, ask yourself, what are we doing today to prepare our children for tomorrow? Because waiting is no longer an option. Thank you for listening to Black Girls Do Engineer podcast, where we build confidence, community, and future in stone. To learn more about Black Girls to Engineer, you can visit our website at BlackgirlsDoEngineer.org or email us at info at blackgirlsdoengineer.org. I'll see you in the next episode.