Home Podcast Creating Future Female Tech Business Leaders with Jasmine LeFlore

Creating Future Female Tech Business Leaders with Jasmine LeFlore

by Neal Bloom

Listen on Apple, Google, Spotify, and other platforms. 

Jasmine LeFlore is co-founder of Greater Than Tech, a local nonprofit organization designed to create the next tech business leaders by teaching girls of color the intersectionality of engineering and business. As someone who always dreamed of being an aerospace engineer, Jasmine said she wanted to help girls define their own path to engineering.

Jasmine grew up near an airport in Flint, Mich. where she cultivated a curious mind for how planes flew. Jasmine was actively a part of First Robotics in high school where she learned more about engineering, taking any opportunity to learn through community programs, with the encouragement of her mom, who was an educator. During her freshman year, she had a college tour to the University of Michigan and visited the aerospace engineering department, realizing that she could learn about aerodynamics and understand how those planes could fly. She pursued her dream and eventually graduated from University of Michigan with a degree in aerospace engineering in 2015.

Post-grad, Jasmine found her first job at United Technologies (now Raytheon Technologies) as a component project integrated team lead, designing and testing engineering projects. She eventually got her masters degree in interdisciplinary engineering from Purdue, which further opened her eyes to the intersectionality of engineering and business and how they can work together. She also taught robotics to middle school girls where she said she saw girls of color didn’t engage as much due to lack of confidence. Feeling empathy for them, she created Greater than Tech for young women of color to be supported in learning robotics. 

Greater than Tech is all about self-efficacy, celebrating goals and achievements in all programs, so the students feel like they are motivated and can code for themselves. The nonprofit’s recent four-week program, Girl Meets Drone, was inspired by the lack of representation of women of color in the drone industry, and the desire  to expose students to that. Listen to Jasmine LeFlore share her hopes for Greater than Tech’s growth and how she is transforming opportunities for STEM learning for girls of color like herself.

 

Her favorite local tacos:

Tacos El Gordo in San Diego

Oscars Mexican Seafood in Hillcrest

 

Connect with Jasmine:

LinkedIn

 

Learn more about Greater Than Tech:

Website: https://www.greaterthantech.org/ 

Facebook: @greaterthantech

Twitter: @greaterthantech

LinkedIn

 

Thanks to our partners at Cox Business & Cox Edge for their support in enabling us to grow the San Diego ecosystem.

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