Let's start with some encouraging words.
“As soon as I realized that what making technology go to the heights it is today is because of its ability to make people come together.”
Deerthi Karthik is a student at Bentonville High School. Earlier this year, she was awarded first prize in a pitch competition at the annual Women in Technology Northwest Arkansas Gala. Tiffany Benitez, founder and president of that organization, says the annual pitch competition for girls in tech is designed around a challenge connected to the community.
“I try to say, what are issues that we're struggling with, and how do we really tap into this next level of talent to help us solve some of that? So this year, this problem was really around school waste. There's a ton of it. Again, plugging back into our school systems, how do we really start providing resources and help and ideas where there are gaps?”
In September, the top three finalists presented their concepts at the gala. Deerthi's winning idea is called Evergreen.
“Evergreen is a small prototype that takes in your waste. That can be trash, recycling, anything that you would need to throw away. And it would take it, and it would use an AI detection system to figure out if it was needed for specific companies. And that's where the monetary value of it came in. But then there was also compost, plastic and normal waste.”
This prototype wasn't created in a vacuum. She talked with leaders of the Bentonville School System and area businesses to gauge interest in reducing food and food waste. She had a meeting with the Tyson Food Sustainability Leadership, and she had tech professional mentorship.
“Miss Swarna Sidhu. She is a assistant professor at the MSU. She has been with me all of summer and through this journey as well. She looked into my AI model. She gave me tips on why some of it wasn't working, and that really helped me divert myself from figuring out the perfect tech solution into bringing the community together through tech. And I really, really appreciate her for that.”
With the help, Evergreen started to become a reality. Deerthi says during the development of her pitch, she knew she needed the project to be user-friendly.
“And how one interacts with the model needs to be easy, but it also needs to give others a feeling of accomplishment, but also the idea of being a good human being. So we all know that school is really difficult sometimes, and we need to stop feeling like we have another obligation to crash.
“So I thought of, how can we make this fun? So I know everyone in kindergarten probably threw away trash by throwing it into the recycling bin and shooting it, and we started there. I asked my brother and he's like, ‘Deerthi, I love doing this.’ So I started with a basketball hoop. I put it on the prototype. They would go up, they would throw away the every single, like maybe an orange, maybe the milk carton. They would throw it into the hoop and facial recognition system would give them credit for actually doing it, which shows that they were being a good human being, and it lets them see the impact they made in real time.
“After that, it would go into a small box where the AI classification system figures out exactly what type of waste it is, and then it will mechanically put that into the right box. And there's a whole business model that comes after that which will collect the trash, but all they see is them shooting in and then being congratulated for it.”
Tiffany Benitez, founder and president of Women in Technology of Northwest Arkansas, says this is the exact sort of work she imagined when getting the group established. The mission includes the encouragement of connection and collaboration between women already in tech, but there is also a strong dedication to mentorship. Ultimately, the idea is to raise the number of women in the tech workforce to above the national average of 28%, and to increase the number of minority women in the tech force above the single digits. She says it's about providing the space for young ideas to incubate.
“We as adults have access to companies, we have access to platforms, we have access to ways that we should be turning around and creating that space for them. So for us, you know, gala aside, this is what we do all day, every day in our community is really just trying to focus in on these girls and boys.
“The reality is we, we talk to and we host girls and boys. Our focal point is really around women and girls in the community as we continue to fight the 28%, we really want that number to be driven up, and we feel like our next generation is really where we can see that impact happen. But it's them. They're incredibly intelligent. You just heard her literally at 15 years old. I was not building models. I wasn't, and they're they're so intelligent. It's just about how do we continue to create space and opportunities for them to be seen.”
Tiffany's career in the tech world is stretching past 20 years now, but as she says, it's a vocation she didn't have a direct path into in school. She says the extent of her experience with tech was typing on a computer keyboard.
“So women in my generation, most of us stumbled into technology. We went after whatever it is that we were doing, and then we started asking questions and we started getting curious. And that's how I ended up in tech 23 years ago. I was on the business side, but they were doing all of these solutions and I got super curious. And so I just started asking questions and they're like, ‘Hey, do you want to come work in tech?’
“So I want them to not have to stumble in. I want them to not think that it's only the computer science that mostly our schools can offer, and the schools are doing the best they can. They only have so many resources. So how do we and groups like us, come into the school system and be an additional resource and show these kids full spectrum, like you can do anything you want to do and do it in tech.
For Deerthi Karthik, there is a benefit to being younger. She had a role model in her home.
“She has 15 plus years experience in tech and waking, like watching her wake up every morning helping me and my brother get to school, but then going and doing her job, helping her community in tech, coming back home and helping us really showed me that there was no box to fit into. It's that she just grew it to an extent that everything fit in with her, and I really, really appreciate her being that role model since day one, since I was born.”
And to that end, Women in Technology of Northwest Arkansas purposefully tilts toward support for each other. And that's a big component of their mentorship, too. When Deerthi presented at the gala this September, she had her best friend by her side. Literally.
“That's Gaushi Chauhan. She's my best friend. Me and her co-founded a nonprofit to help kids like us in middle school when they come into high school. And our entire nonprofit was there to support me. And she was there with me right next to me on stage. So I really appreciate them as well.”
Before she launched Evergreen, she was helping to found a nonprofit called Inspire Ed Next Up. It's designed to help boys and girls with the transition from middle school to high school.
“And what we do is we help middle schoolers figure out what they want to do after high school and in high school. Right now in the education system, students have to figure out what career path they want to go into by eighth grade. And eighth grade is such a young age. We basically that's when people go through puberty.
“So that's when they're figuring out themselves, much less what they want to do for the rest of their life. And that's, um, that was really hard for us. So it's me, Gaushi Chauhan. We were sitting in a library room and we realized that everyone has this pain point. So we made a non-profit from that day and that's what Next Step is for now.”
And while this non-profit is not specifically tied to tech, Tiffany Benitez says the spirit of that non-profit actually dovetails quite nicely with Women in Technology of Northwest Arkansas.
“And we have so many things in this world right now that divide us. I mean, it's anything, it's everything. But what we're watching happen is people set aside every single thing that's dividing us and come together as community. They're helping each other find jobs. They're coming in supporting our girls and boys.”
And this group is stretching beyond Northwest Arkansas. There are now ten other chapters across the country, including Women in Technology of Central Arkansas, of Mississippi and Charlotte.
And progress continues for Evergreen, Deerthi's winning proposal. She's now working on places to pilot that project.
“I'm also looking for a local PET partner for the schools, because schools give about one million tons of PET annually, which I talked about in my presentation. And we are looking for that as well. But I think in one year we'll probably have this piloted and hopefully it will go towards a good direction and we'll have this in maybe Bentonville High School, Bentonville West, and we're starting to pilot it in high schools just because they're older students, hopefully more mature. And that's how we're thinking of doing it so far.
“And we’ll also probably talk about Tyson and what they did in their own company to be part of this mission. So stay tuned.”
And to find out what Women in Technology of Northwest Arkansas is doing, the group is active on most social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, and you can find out more as well at Women in Tech NWA dot org.
Our conversations with Tiffany Benitez and Deerthi Karthik took place in Bentonville last week.
