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Dr. Danielle Sweeney

WOMEN IN STEM – Dr. Danielle Sweeney

Executive Director @ IVUmed

Dr. Danielle Sweeney tackles global health issues as the executive director of IVUMed.Her love for mentorship leaves an impact on local doctors in their respective communities around the world as she carries on the philosophy of teach one, reach many. We are so honored that she has chosen to speak with us today about her career and the ways in which she uses her skills to impact the world.

What sparked your interest and made you want to volunteer with Girlstart?

I’ve been in the Austin community for many years and have loved the impact that Girlstart is making in our community. Mentorship is so important, especially if pursuing a career that is new (among your family or friends) or where you might be the only girl (or one of few) in the room. (I know I benefited from mentorship in my own career.)

What would you like to tell girls who are interested in pursuing a STEM career? What words of encouragement would you share with them?

Go for it. There are so many rewarding vocations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Girls can do hard things and thrive and achieve in worlds that aren’t always open to them.

Was there a specific person, program, or event in your life that led you to your STEM career?

I have dreamed of being a doctor since I was 13 years old and was driven since that time to achieve that goal. That I was the first female resident in over a decade at my six-year urologic surgery residency didn’t dissuade me. Medicine always has been my passion. After working in a private medical practice for many years, I found a new way to pursue the vocation I love as executive director of IVUmed. Our organization helps train doctors in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia that don’t have access to specialized medical training for urologic diseases. The work is very meaningful — we really are changing the lives of adults and children.

What are your favorite things about your career?

Parents came to us with their babies in their hands, having lost nearly all hope that their child’s condition would improve. We were able to successfully treat their children and teach local doctors how to continue these patients’ medical care. There are so many conditions that are easily treated or repaired in the U.S. but in medically underserved countries doctors don’t have the specialized training or resources to help people in their own communities. Our philosophy is to teach one, reach many – that is, train local doctors to treat and care for adults and children in their own communities. I love the mentorship. I love the camaraderie. I love helping changes adults’ and children’s lives in a meaningful and sustainable way.

What is your greatest accomplishment?

I was appointed Executive Director in August 2020, the point in the pandemic where we knew onsite training in partner countries in Africa, South America, and Asia would not be possible in the foreseeable future. But the pandemic did not put an end to global health issues. We had to find new ways to train local doctors that didn’t require traveling. Virtual surgical training was an idea that hadn’t yet gotten off the ground and, like most other industries, we knew we had to get online and try it. I’m so proud to report that in two years, IVUmed has provided 89 virtual lectures and trained 1740 health care providers in 40+ countries. Each trained clinician has the potential to continue providing medical care to thousands of children and adults in need. I’ve always felt that great leaders help others step up, that they inspire people to dream more and do more. In our own way, IVUmed is leading the way by giving skills and resources to local doctors to become the medical leaders that they want to be.

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Nikki Merrill

WOMEN IN STEM – Nikki Merrill

Project Engineer @ Williams

Nikki Merrill’s life changed after applying to one engineering scholarship in high school. Since then, her love for Civil Engineering led her to become an esteemed project engineer for Williams. We are so honored that she has chosen to speak with us today about her career and the ways in which she uses her skills of solving complex problems in the natural gas pipeline business!

What sparked your interest and made you want to volunteer with Girlstart?

I think it is a great program that introduces STEM in a fun way at the formative years which is so crucial and beneficial.

What is your favorite Girlstart memory?

I really loved when we asked the girls to shout out some female role models and they were naming Mae Jemison, Maya Angelou, and Miley Cyrus! I thought it was so cool that young girls knew Mae Jemison!

What would you like to tell girls who are interested in pursuing a STEM career? What words of encouragement would you share with them?

Just do it like Nike says. I truly believe you are the author of your life and you can do anything if you want it bad enough.

Was there a specific person, program, or event in your life that led you to your STEM career?

My high school biology teacher. He encouraged me to fill out an engineering scholarship application for Texas A&M. At that point, I was planning on going to community college or the U.S. Navy because I did not have any money for college and my parents were not in a situation where they could help monetarily. I ended up being awarded the scholarship and it allowed me to attend Texas A&M where I majored in Civil Engineering.

Tell us about your STEM field?

I work in the natural gas pipeline business where we build out the infrastructure to transport natural gas. It is critical infrastructure needed to provide energy to businesses, manufacturing, and homes. We build pipelines and compressor facilities to compress natural gas all over the USA.

What are your favorite things about your career/field?

I really enjoy solving complex problems. Each project is trying to achieve the same result but there are always new and interesting challenges in each project. I enjoy working on a team with other engineers and non-engineers to solve problems and drive these projects to completion. It is really rewarding to be a part of our energy industry.

What projects/programs you have worked on?

I have worked on many projects where we build pipelines to transport natural gas to business, refineries, and homes. I have also worked on building compressor stations where we use natural gas-powered turbines to compress natural gas on the pipeline and send it along.

Why is confidence in STEM important for girls?

Girls need to cultivate a positive inner talk track and they need to protect that and maintain it for the rest of their lives. A positive mindset will lead to confidence and that is so crucial because you need confidence to take risks and do things that seem scary at first.

This blog was written by Caroline Onwuzu. During the spring 2022 semester when she was a senior at The University of Texas Austin majoring in Human Development and Family Science, Caroline served as a Volunteer & Community Relations Intern at Girlstart. In this role, she helped volunteers connect in meaningful ways to Girlstart. At UT, she was also the president of the African Student Organization.

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Bruna Dahm

Girlstart’s Women in STEM weekly series highlights various women who are making a difference in STEM. Be inspired as these incredible women describe how they became interested in their field, provide insight into a day in the life, and share learnings from their experiences.

Bruna Dahm

Software Engineer @ Dell Technologies

Briefly describe your career/field.

I was a young mom at 17 years old, I had two kids and not much money, didn’t have a rich family, so I started working with business management, in a company that makes 3D screens for cinema, there I discovered myself in IT due to a project I conducted. Since then, I could not stop studying, I fell in love with the area. I started an internship as a Software Developer when I was at my first semester of school (IT has so many opportunities for those who do not have experience), there I started learning more and more. I built websites that could read data from the database I created, could make automations in large databases regarded to protection data laws. So, when my internship was about to end I started looking for a new job. I’ve always been interested into Data field (Data Science and Data Engineering) and I found one as a Software Engineer at Dell Technologies, to work with big data, data engineering and a little of data science. I thought I couldn’t make it, but I did. And now I work for my dream company and everything is as I always dreamed it could be.

What is your greatest accomplishment?

So far working at Dell as a Software Engineer with Big Data and Data Science, it’s something I’ve always wanted.

Why is confidence in STEM important for girls?

Very important, when I got started in technology I was not very confident about how it would be being a woman in tech. But I started anyway, now I can say there are too many opportunities and my gender hasn’t been an impact. Technology needs us!

What sparked your interest and made you want to volunteer with Girlstart?

I wish I could have had one woman to tell me everything would be great in the area and I would have the same opportunities a man would.

What would you like to tell girls who are interested in pursuing a STEM career? What words of encouragement would you share with them?

I was not good at math in high school but what I’ve learned in these years is that there is absolutely nothing we can’t learn from zero. I came from nowhere, was a young mom and even with this scenery I could make it, so all of you can make it too. Don’t be afraid.

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Holly Huynh

Girlstart’s Women in STEM weekly series highlights various women who are making a difference in STEM. Be inspired as these incredible women describe how they became interested in their field, provide insight into a day in the life, and share learnings from their experiences.

Holly Huynh

Director of Digital, Marketing Operations, Analytics @ Mitratech

Meet Holly Huynh, a past Girlstart volunteer and an inspiring woman in STEM! Read about her career journey below!

Briefly describe your career/field.

I came out of college (1st generation college graduate) thinking that I wanted to pursue law, so I interned at the Texas State capitol while working as a legal assistant at a law firm. I eventually moved on to manage a law office, but after going through the admission process and working closely with attorneys, ultimately decided I wanted to focus more on business. I happened to get a job at a tech franchise as a support manager that eventually led me to take over their marketing department, building out my own team and programs. I later moved into a small digital marketing agency start up to focus more on paid advertising and analytics that allowed me to specialize and grow into a senior leadership role. I was later recruited over to Gartner, a large enterprise research company, to lead their paid advertising team which was beginning to struggle. I ended up rebuilding that team and program from the ground up, setting many new company records, and winning their business impact award. During this time, I identified that the biggest obstacles we faced on the marketing side was operational and involved our data cleanliness, which led me to pitch and launch a new marketing operations department to work more closely with the business analytics, engineering, and product management organizations. I eventually moved over to the business analytics organization within Gartner to manage a team of analysts there focused on improving processes, data pipelines, reporting, and training. I recently left Gartner to begin my new role with Mitratech, an enterprise legal and compliance software company, heading up their Digital, Marketing Operations, and Analytics departments. I am building out a digital team that will manage our digital web presence and paid media; a marketing ops team that will manage our lead nurturing programs and tech stack; and analytics team that will handle data accuracy, performance reporting, and data storytelling.

What are your favorite things about your career/field?

I love that the industry is constantly changing and there are always opportunities to continue to learn and move around or build something new. One of my favorite things, while also considered a challenge, is that it is a constant struggle and challenge to earn the female representation in my industry. I love that with the support of the right mentors, I can become a thought leader in my field and prove those who doubted or questioned my abilities. In regards to the field specifically, I love the ability to look at a huge set of data and piecing it together to tell a story, then strategizing to understand where the next opportunities are. It’s like a big, fun game where you keep unlocking new levels.

What projects/programs have you worked on?

Paid advertising (search, display, social, video, etc), brand building, operational improvements, and data analytics involving data pipelines and data visualization tools.

Was there a specific person, program, or event in your life that led you to your STEM career?

There are probably 2 key moments that led me to where I am – the partner of the law firm I was managing who told me he was unhappy, and my next boss, the VP of product strategy at the tech franchise that hired me and allowed me to eventually take over the marketing strategy and build out my own team. That’s where I realized my passion for marketing and business strategy. It just grew from there. I still keep in close contact with that former VP to this day and consider her a mentor.

What is your greatest accomplishment?

I am very proud of how far I’ve come in my career as just a successful female in the tech industry, but why I’m most proud is looking back on what I had to overcome to get here. I am a first generation of my family (parents migrated here from Vietnam), did not learn the English language until I started preschool (where I was then placed in ESL for years), being the first in my family to graduate college, and then having the courage to switch careers into an unknown industry.

What sparked your interest and made you want to volunteer with Girlstart?

I got an email with my previous company for a volunteer opportunity with setup and breakdown of an event. Reading more about what the program stood for and how it can help mentor young girls into the field I’m currently in is really what made me want to get more involved.

What is your favorite Girlstart moment (event, time you volunteered, etc.)?

I’ve only volunteered at one event so far, which was just organizing the set up and breakdown of the event, so my moments are limited, but I loved seeing the look of excitement on the young girls faces as they arrived to sign in and got all of their goodies.

What would you like to tell girls who are interested in pursuing a STEM career? What words of encouragement would you share with them?

I would say that the field is challenging, but it’s the challenges and struggles you will come across that are what make your successes even more rewarding. I would also like them to know that it is possible to have a successful career and a balanced family life, as long as you remember to prioritize your mental health, value yourself, and set personal boundaries.

Why is confidence in STEM important for girls?

More than ever now, female representation and diversity are so important. While I’ve been fortunate to be successful now, I have come across many people in my career who, out of ignorance, culture, or just plain bias, made me really struggle and had me reconsidering my career path. If I can help even one girl persevere through a similar situation, I will consider it a success.

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