Heather F.

Heather is a Junior at Woodward Academy. She has been an active member of robotics/STEAM Programs at her schools since the 4th grade. Currently, she is on FRC team 6925 and FTC 17075 and is a co-captain and head of electrical, diversity, marketing, and Instagram. She and her co-captain lily are the first female captains of the team. She is mostly self-taught with mentorship and is now working to train the next generation of the team. Currently, her FTC team is one of the top teams in the state winning their first competition so far. She has had many accomplishments in her STEM career. She created a prosthetic foot prototype for a dog named Pheonix, a victim of dogfighting. Through a program at Georgia Tech, she and other girls were able to change the life of a dog in need. In Middle school, she was a founding member of the first all-women VEX robotics team at her school called "The Black Widows". They encouraged more girls to follow in their footsteps and get involved. Finally, currently,her team is working to create a swerve drive train. She lead her team through the complicated research, design, and finally creation of the electrical system. Alongside her robotics responsibilities, she is actively working to make her school a more inclusive place for all people in STEM. She worked with a member of the class of 2021 to create a diversity training program currently being implemented working to help students learn about each other's differences and how they can be an ally and respectful. This issue is particularly important to her as a queer woman in STEM. The program has shown huge success and she is currently working with her school's administration to make it a school-wide resource. She has also worked to create an initiative with the Woodward Academy Middle School to encourage more girls to get involved in middle school and eventually in high school. In the future, she wants to use STEM to help people. While she isn't exactly sure how she wants to yet, working with the environment or animals aligns with her passions of hers. A dream of her's has always been to design and create prosthetics for animals, which combines her love of animal rescue and engineering. In addition to bettering the world through robotics, she hopes to continue to advocate for all people in stem and make the field a safer and more inclusive space.