These Two Millennial Engineers Partnered With Karlie Kloss To Create The Techsetters Podcast, Spotlighting Diverse Gems In Tech
From left to right: Samantha Wiener, Karlie Kloss and Jenny Wang. KODE WITH KLOSSY
This past year, audio has become one of the hottest mediums for content and communication. And while we are all gradually coming out of lockdown, audio tech is here to stay — scaling exponentially on platforms like Spotify, Apple and Twitter. Two female engineers rode this sound wave to launch a purposeful project called Techsetters — a podcast that spotlights diverse gems in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Co-hosts Jenny Wang and Samantha Wiener partnered with Kode With Klossy to kick off the first season a year ago and are today unveiling season two with a series of fifteen notable speakers who will share their career-defining moments and unconventional paths in the world of STEM.
Wang and Wiener first met at a training session for engineers while they were interning in Silicon Valley, bonding over a shared passion for technology, fashion and female leaders in STEM. Both studied Computer Science as undergrads and are now working their magic in the world of tech — Wang as a founder and investor, and Wiener as an engineering manager at Instagram.
“The name Techsetters came from a brainstorming session Jenny and I had when we were thinking about our goals for the podcast,” Wiener told me in an interview. “We wanted to highlight the coolest trendsetters in tech, fashion and beyond, and we felt ‘Techsetters’ perfectly captured the amazing individuals we have been lucky enough to have on the podcast.”
You Can’t Be What You Can’t See
Guests from season one include Joy Buolamwini, the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League; Heidi Zak, the co-founder and co-CEO of Third Love; Cady Coleman, a NASA astronaut; Deborah Berebichez, the chief data scientist at Discovery Channel; and, naturally, Karlie Kloss. The model-turned-entrepreneur founded Kode With Klossy (KWK) in 2015 to create a free coding camp for girls aged 13-18. As part of KWK's 2021 camp programming, Wang and Wiener will host a Techsetters speaker series, incorporating interactive elements for scholars to engage with some of the leading women in tech.
Since launching six years ago, KWK says it has reached 5,000 scholars, with plans to award 3,000 scholarships this summer. The program is clearly having a significant impact by shaping the next generation of leaders in STEM as according to the organization, 65% of its scholars who are now in college are studying computer science or engineering.
And this is what motivated Wang and Wiener to create Techsetters — “You can’t be what you can’t see” is their signature statement and core belief. “As two young female engineers who have been proactive in meeting people in the industry, we still wish to see more women in executive and C-suite positions in STEM, especially women who we can relate to and aspire to be,” Wang says. “If it’s hard for us, who have been fortunate enough to have exposure through the opportunities that we’ve had, then what about high school or college students who aren’t aware of these careers, or don’t even know they exist?”
Coded Bias
It’s no secret that the tech community has perpetuated a homogenous status quo, which often results in blatantly biased behaviour. Whether conscious or unconscious, the outcome is the same: less women and people of color are hired, promoted and included in the companies that shape and define our lives. As demonstrated in the Netflix documentary Coded Bias, the bias also feeds into the algorithms that are created. The documentary brilliantly uncovers how people embed their own biases into technology, and how systemic behaviors of racism and misogyny are hardwired into codes.
The result? Biased facial recognition softwares, but also biased ad algorithms that ban women’s health startups trying to promote their products and services on social networks. It isn’t that surprising when you think about it as the tech titans who have architected the way machines behave (i.e. Google, Apple, Facebook et al.) were all founded by white men. So yes, it is crucial to place more women and people of color at high-level engineering positions as it will ensure more diverse softwares.
Who Run The World?
The Techsetters podcast is produced by Kode With Klossy and funded by IF/THEN, an organization that is founded on the belief that “IF we support a woman in STEM, THEN she can change the world.”
Wang and Wiener serendipitously met Kloss at a hotel in Boston while attending the Forbes 30 under 30 conference, later sending her a direct message on Instagram to share the initial idea for Techsetters. The rest, as they say, is history.
"Sam and Jenny are such inspiring young women and it's been so fun and exciting to watch them grow over the past two seasons of Techsetters,” Kloss wrote in an email. “We really wanted to give all aspiring young women in tech, especially our Kode With Klossy scholars, a clear sense of the amazing careers they can build and all the opportunities that are out there. Amplifying the stories and unconventional paths of tech leaders is so important."
Season two of Techsetters kicks off today with Fig O'Reilly — an Irish-American model who was crowned Miss Universe Ireland in 2019 and is now an engineer, the director of Space Apps DC and host of the NASA International Space Apps Challenge. Other guests who will be featured include Padmasree Warrior, the founder and CEO of Fable; Claire Johnson Hughes, the COO of Stripe; and Debbie Sterling, the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox.
When asked what makes coding such a superpower, Wang and Wiener point to something Kloss once told them: “To be able to code gives you the freedom to build anything.”