Our story
As a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin and a woman in STEM, Sophie Sanchez found that students were isolated in their degree programs and unaware of career options outside of medicine and academia, experiencing little exposure to industry careers and few opportunities to engage meaningfully with prospective employers.
Program development at the Society for Advancing Gender Equity in STEM (SAGES) at UT
To address these challenges, Sophie founded a UT organization (SAGES) which now has over 750 members and an advisory council of more than 20 UT faculty and staff.
With a team of SAGES mentorship committee members, Sophie launched a mentorship program to provide sustained, individualized guidance for women undergraduate and graduate students in STEM fields at UT and opportunities for them to explore industry careers. The program blossomed to serve over 200 participants at UT in 2022 alone.
Launching STEM Muse
Inspired by participant success stories, including mentees landing jobs & internships, we launched STEM Muse in February of 2023 as a Public Benefit Corporation to extend the program’s impact & scale beyond UT Austin. We are patching the leaky pipeline for women in STEM by providing women in STEM higher education access to career opportunities, and conversely, we're giving companies access to opportunities for early sustained, and direct engagement with an underrepresented talent pool.
