NORTH PHILADELPHIA - A Philadelphia native and educator is on a mission to cultivate young leaders in STEM who look like her."One of my board members said this organization is a letter to my younger self," said Atiyah Harmon. "I was a math student, pretty strong, but I didn’t see a trajectory for what you would do if you loved math outside of being an accountant.
So, I kind of stayed away. In 12th grade I had the option to opt out of Honors Math. Never give a 17-year-old that option."Harmon is the founder and executive director of Black Girls Love Math, a nonprofit providing after school and Saturday programming for students with the goal of exponentially increasing the number of black women in STEM careers.Right now, she said black women only make up 2 percent of STEM careers.
Her nonprofit aims to exponentially increase that number to 8 percent in 10 to 15 years."It was a gap in the space for girls to feel welcome and whole in themselves.
I don’t think we do anything revolutionary, except give them a safe space to explore and be themselves and comfortable to know that they are math people too," said Harmon.At St.