It’s Not the What or the When but the Who: The Impact of a Mentor.
January is National Mentoring Month, together with the CSforALL community, we recognize the importance of having an inspirational mentor and the impact they can have on our youth in the CSforALL field.
This January marks the 19th annual National Mentoring Month, every year around this time organizations come together to promote youth mentoring in the Untied States. CSforALL recognizes the importance of having strong and impactful mentors when potentially embarking on the journey of Computer Science. CSforALL’s Director of Research, Stephanie Wortel-London (SWL), exchanged an inquisitive conversation with Girls Who Code’s Chief Operating Officer, Tarika Barrett (TB), about Tarika’s own personal and professional experience on how not only a mentor but the ‘right’ mentor can truly change and progress your career and life.
Take an Inside Look at their Conversation:
Stephanie Wortel-London (SWL): Before stepping into the role of Chief Operating Officer at Girls Who Code, you served as Chief Program Officer at iMentor, an organization dedicated to ensuring that all enrolled high school students are matched with a committed, college-educated mentor to support in making college decisions and eventually making the transition to being a college student. Were you drawn to this work because of the impact of mentoring in your life?
Tarika Barrett (TB): Absolutely. The power of mentoring was always really important for my mum. She actually started one of the first mentoring programs in Kingston, Jamaica after seeing how both rural-to-urban drift and migration were leaving a lot of teenagers without the support systems and role models they needed.
Eventually, my mum went to Columbia and got her master’s degree. And even though she would always cite people who believed in her and mentored her as the reason she made it, she really had to navigate a lot of the higher education process on her own. So when it came time for me to prepare for college, she didn’t have really targeted advice to help me navigate issues like choice, fit, or taking the SATs. She trusted me a lot with these big decisions.
I really could have benefited from having a mentor — beyond my mum — in my corner, helping with these big decisions we ask teenagers to make. I think my experience is really reflective of how much your background and exposure can affect what options you see as available.
So I know how impactful having a mentor and advocate can be for young people, especially for girls of color. Unfortunately, women of color aren’t always amplified as role models so it can be particularly challenging for girls of color to find mentors who look like them. I know personally how important it is to have a mentor who looks like you, to help you reach your fullest potential.
(SWL): What do you think is most important for a college student or professional to know if they are thinking about mentoring someone?
(TB): If you’re thinking about it, you’ve already taken the most important step in becoming a mentor: believing in someone. That’s half the work. Yes, our young people need skills, tactics, and advice, but they also need someone who has faith in their ability to succeed. From there, it’s all about bravery, persistence, and coaching.
And I would add that we shouldn’t underestimate the impact we have on young people just by being present. Just by being someone who went to college, who got that first job, or who has been promoted up the ladder, you’re showing young people they can accomplish those milestones as well. You might be a mentor, and not even realize it.
(SWL): One of the missions of Girls Who Code is to increase the number of women in computer science. There are systemic issues that serve as barriers to young women entering computer science and other computational fields, but the issues faced by a young woman in New York City might be different from those faced by a young woman in Boise, Idaho, or Standing Rock, or El Paso, Texas. What role do you think having relatable mentors in computer science could play in helping women to face and overcome those barriers in Computer Science?
(TB): At Girls Who Code, we always say you can’t be what you can’t see. Right now, tech is a hard industry for young women to enter — it’s easy to feel isolated when you don’t have any peers or role models around. And that’s why we see such a high number of young women entering the industry and then leaving soon after.
According to a study from the University of Massachusetts, 100% of women with female mentors remained in engineering majors. That’s how powerful mentorship is. It shows young women that they’re not alone, that they can succeed because women who’ve come before them have done it too.
And it’s true, we need young women from all over the country and the world to have successful role models they can relate to — and that looks different in New York City and in El Paso. That’s why we’re working to change the face of tech. Because we need more diversity in tech and we need any student who’s interested in the field to be able to find someone they can look up to.
(SWL): If you had one piece of advice for a young person reading this, who is excited about a future career in computer science and that thinks they could benefit from having a mentor, what would you tell them?
(TB): I would say don’t give up. Right now, it can be tough to find relatable role models for everyone. We need to both make progress on diversity and do a better job of elevating diverse role models.
In the meantime, look to your peers for support. One of our core values at Girls Who Code is “Sisterhood.” We believe in giving girls both the skills they need to succeed in tech, and a community to support them in their journey. It makes a world of difference. Having a community of peers who look like you and are going through the same things you are can be incredibly powerful. And who knows, they may even be able to help connect you with mentors as well.
About the Authors:
Stephanie Wortel-London, Director of Research, CSforALL: Dr. Wortel-London leads the Research and Equity research agenda at CSforALL. She has worked for more than a decade to reinforce the sharing of knowledge and strengthen connections between K-12 STEM education and higher ed STEM research. Prior to joining CSforALL, she developed and led enrichment and mentoring programs serving under-represented youth through in-person and virtual programming at the New York Academy of Sciences. She has taught in Germany, Malaysia, China, and across the United States, and her career in science education began as an Earth Science teacher in a South Bronx public school. She was also a curriculum writer and educator at the American Museum of Natural History. Her doctoral work at Stony Brook University’s Institute for STEM Education focused on the impact of informal learning experiences and near-peer mentors on students historically marginalized in STEM fields, and she has served as an Adjunct Professor for the Space Systems course in the AMNH Master of Arts in Teaching Residency graduate program. She also serves on the Associate Board of the Red Hook Initiative and on the board of the 1000 Steps Fellows.
Tarika Barrett, Chief Operating Officer, Girls Who Code: Dr. Tarika Barrett currently serves as Chief Operating Officer at Girls Who Code, an international non-profit organization working to close the gender gap in technology by inspiring, educating and equipping young women with the computing skills to pursue 21st century opportunities. In her role as COO, Tarika oversees the organization’s free Summer Immersion Program and after-school Clubs Program, which have reached 90,000 girls across the United States, in addition to the International Expansion, Alumni Programming, and People & Culture teams.
Tarika also serves on the board of CSforALL, an organization committed to making high-quality computer science an integral part of the educational experience of all K-12 students and teachers and to support student pathways to college and career success. She also sits on the board of Eskolta, a nonprofit dedicated to helping urban public schools re-engage at-risk teenagers.
Previously, Tarika worked as the Chief Program Officer at iMentor, leading the organization’s programmatic efforts to build mentoring relationships that support students from low-income communities in graduating high school and succeeding in college. Prior to iMentor, she worked in the Office of Postsecondary Readiness at the New York City Department of Education overseeing options for students significantly off-track academically, as well as developing new schools models including the Academy for Software Engineering. Tarika’s previous experience includes serving as Deputy Network Leader of the Brooklyn-Staten Island Network of New Visions for Public Schools, designing and implementing research and program evaluations for New York University’s Center for Research on Teaching and Learning, teaching high school students, and working as a political organizer. A graduate of Brooklyn College, Tarika has an M.A. in deaf education from Columbia Teachers College and a Ph.D. in teaching and learning from New York University.
