Eterneva

“Close your eyes and picture an engineer,” opens Debbie Sterling in her Ted Talk in 2013. She continues by asking the crowd to raise their hands for how they pictured an engineer while their eyes were closed. Hands rose for images of train drivers and nerdy men at computers, but when she asked the crowd if anyone pictured someone who looked like her- they were silent.

Debbie Sterling was born to a Jewish family in 1983 with no intention of becoming an entrepreneur. Her path didn’t intertwine with entrepreneurship until after she had received her B.S. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 2005. “Years later,” she says, “I did some research, and I learned that I was actually at a disadvantage. Like a lot of other girls, I had underdeveloped spatial skills. The other interesting thing I learned was that kids who scored better on spatial skills tests, grew up playing with construction toys.”

Sterling took this new knowledge, her engineering degree, and pursued a solution to the problem of the lack of females in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (also referred to as STEM). She quit her job and spent months working out of her apartment on a construction toy for targeted to girls but was faced with resistance from investors. “They whispered to me a well-known industry secret: construction toys for girls don’t sell, and they took me by the arm and showed me what does sell- the pink isle.”

So how does someone overcome the culture that has previously been established for the past century? Sterling knew that things didn’t have to be the way they always were but saw that girls get easily bored when playing with construction toys. When she asked what they do enjoy, the young girls responded that they love to read. It was this discovery that led her to create GoldieBlocks, the world’s first female engineering character that is teaching young girls around the world that they can be more than a princess.

GoldieBlocks combines the narrative that little girls love with construction and building toys. Girls can build with Goldie and as a result develop both their verbal and spatial skills. Sterling did what nobody else thought to- she took a toy that had been historically targeted for boys and re-imagined it for girls. Her idea is revolutionary because it’s not just taking an idea and targeting a new market, she is equipping young girls with the tools they need to develop their spatial skills in an enjoyable way. She didn’t just accept that little girls aren’t interested in those type of toys, she bridged the gap between girls and engineering. Despite the resistance she faced, her company has since flourished. According to Forbes’s 40 Under 40: “[GoldieBlox] has had more than 1 million app downloads and more than 1 million toys sold across more than 6,000 major retailers worldwide.”

As a female studying and pursuing both engineering and entrepreneurship, what Sterling did is what I strive to be able to do one day. She broke the status quo by becoming an engineer as a female, and she broke it again when she took a “boy’s toy” and redesigned it for girls. She is using her engineering skill set to help other girls discover a love for building and creating.

Debbie Sterling is more than an engineer and an entrepreneur; she’s a world changer, and although her business was originally meant to inspire little girls, it’s inspired me to use my passion for STEM to make a difference for girls like me.