Anna Nixon: An advocate for girls in science

Meet our final sur­prise speak­er for TEDxSalem V “Through the Look­ing Glass.”

Anna Nixon’s STEM career began in the sec­ond grade, when she and her father start­ing build­ing robots togeth­er in their garage. She was hooked imme­di­ate­ly.

“I loved that feel­ing of accom­plish­ment that came with final­ly get­ting a robot work­ing after hours of hard work,” she said.

Now, a senior at West­view High School in Port­land, she intends to take her pas­sions to a big­ger stage. Once she earns her degree in com­put­er sci­ence, com­put­er engi­neer­ing, or bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing, she aspires to work with robots that will be used to pro­vide med­ical aid.

Anna has learned a lot since the sec­ond grade, being involved in FIRST Robot­ics, tak­ing advanced STEM class­es in school, and start­ing a non­prof­it, STEM 4 Girls. She’s not only more knowl­edge­able and skilled, she’s become aware of the field’s chal­lenges recruit­ing and retain­ing girls and women.

Ever since Anna first joined robot­ics, she was often the only girl in the room.

“I think that the biggest chal­lenge that comes with being the only girl in the room is feel­ing the pres­sure that your actions will reflect on every girl,” she said. “And I think this is true for any minor­i­ty in any field. It’s easy to get into the mind­set of ‘If I make a mis­take peo­ple are going to think it’s because all girls are bad at this’ instead of mere­ly accept­ing your mis­take and mov­ing on. While it may seem unfound­ed, that fear of fail­ure makes you less con­fi­dent tak­ing risks or ask­ing oth­ers for help which can have a neg­a­tive impact.”

Anna’s non­prof­it, STEM4Girls, aims to solve these issues and help girls stay in STEM by build­ing up their con­fi­dence and fos­ter­ing a sup­port­ing and encour­ag­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

“Var­i­ous stud­ies have shown that girls actu­al­ly tend to do bet­ter in STEM sub­jects than their male coun­ter­parts, at least until around mid­dle school,” Anna said. “As they grow old­er, girls often tend to lose inter­est in STEM because they don’t see oth­er girls doing it or they get the mes­sage that ‘STEM is a guy thing’. Thus, the great­est sup­port that girls can get is mak­ing them feel includ­ed in the STEM com­mu­ni­ty. This means pro­vid­ing them with female role mod­els and peers that they can depend on as well elim­i­nat­ing prej­u­diced views against women in STEM.”

Join us Jan­u­ary 6 to hear more about Anna’s sto­ry and her call to action.

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TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.