Michael UngarCEO of the Industry 4.0 Club

Black Women in Engineering: Representation Matters!

12 Sept 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:55

In this segment of the YouTube video, the speaker (an educator/mentor) explains how intentional exposure and representation are central to encouraging Black girls to pursue engineering. She recounts a 2019 member meeting where many participants had never seen a Black woman engineer, prompting a focused discussion about the speaker’s work and the engineering field. By consistently showing women who look like the girls and involving them in hands‑on activities, the program boosted the participants’ confidence, reshaped their self‑identity as engineers, and led them to articulate concrete college aspirations. The narrative underscores that seeing relatable role models transforms abstract interest into tangible career goals.

Chapters

That's why I do a lot of exposure piece. And then of course, the other element is representation. I like my girls to see women who look like them in this space, mostly because my very first member meeting in 2019, I spent the whole hour just talking about just that. Many of my girls had never seen a Black woman who was an engineer ever in their lives. So me and my team had to sit down and talk to them about what it is that we do and the space that we are in. And what we noticed from that and from having them work with us, they became like very confident in this space. And now a lot of those girls from day one who've been in my program that had those struggles of not seeing a Black woman as an engineer, they see themselves as Black women as engineers and can tell you what college they want to go to and, and all these amazing things that come with it.