Women and people of color have often been hidden figures in STEM, with their important contributions going unrecognized.
In honor of Women’s History Month, Karen Horting, CEO and executive director of SWE, sat down with Dr. Jess Wade, physicist and faculty member at Imperial College London, who has been working to change this.
Dr. Wade has created thousands of Wikipedia pages that highlight the achievements of women scientists and engineers. In this episode, she shares her own STEM journey, the inspiration behind her Wikipedia initiative and the unexpected surprises she has learned along the way.
You’ll also hear her tips for listeners who want to increase the visibility of underrepresented communities in STEM fields — on Wikipedia and beyond.
Listen to the episode on SWE’s website, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or on your favorite podcast platform.
Speaker: Dr. Jess Wade, Physicist and Faculty Member, Imperial College London
Dr. Jess Wade is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer in Functional Materials at Imperial College London. Broadly speaking, her research considers new materials for optoelectronic, spintronic and quantum devices, with a focus on chiral molecular materials.
She was previously an Imperial College Research Fellow in SPIN-Lab at Imperial, which is led by Professor Sandrine Heutz. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Fuchter and Campbell groups at Imperial College London, where she optimized these chiral systems such that can absorb/emit circularly polarized (CP) light for CP OLEDs and OPDs.
For her Ph.D., Dr. Wade concentrated on organic photovoltaics and the development of advanced characterization techniques to better understand molecular packing under the supervision of Dr Ji-Seon Kim.
Outside of the lab, Dr. Wade is involved with several science communication and outreach initiatives. She is committed to improving diversity in science, both online and offline, and since the start of 2018 she has written over 2,000 Wikipedia biographies that highlight women and people of color in STEM.
Host: Karen Horting, Executive Director and CEO, Society of Women Engineers (SWE)
Karen Horting, CAE, is the executive director and CEO for the Society of Women Engineers, a position she has held since Dec. 31, 2013.
With more than 20 years of experience in sales, marketing, and fund development, Horting was most recently the SWE deputy executive director.
In this capacity, she was responsible for all fund development activities for the organization, including corporate membership and SWE’s Corporate Partnership Council and more traditional philanthropy such as foundation and government grants, individual gifts, and bequests.
She also oversaw many of the Society’s programs and services, including professional development, K-12 outreach, the annual conference, and SWE’s international expansion.
She currently serves on the Leadership Circle of the 50K Coalition, the FIRST Robotics Board of Directors, the STEM Ed Coalition Board of Directors, Engineering CAS Diversity Advisory Board, and the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business Dean’s Alumni Advisory Board (DAAB).
