Reinvented Magazine

Students in Title I schools and low-income communities are consistently being left out, and careers in STEM, as a result, can become inaccessible. Students, therefore,  grow up without access to quality STEM education, role models in STEM fields, and hands-on activities that can help boost their self-confidence. 

Female role models serve as a source of inspiration for young girls that can show them to have more belief in themselves, create a sense of belonging in STEM, and identify pathways for them to follow into similar fields. However, many girls are left to question, where can I find a role model?

In a study conducted by Microsoft Research, they found that girls lose interest in STEM as they get older. One of the core reasons identified for the loss of interest was a lack of role models and support from parents and educators. They determined that girls who have role models in STEM are 1.4 times more likely to pursue opportunities in these fields, yet only 40% of the girls interviewed said they actually had a role model in STEM.

Most girls don’t grow up with a female role model in STEM within their households. Their next opportunity to find someone would be at school. It’s possible that they have a female STEM teacher, but it’s unlikely that they are teaching their students about career pathways in science and engineering versus the standard concept-based lesson plans. If they don’t luck out at home or in the classroom, where can they look next? They head home, turn on the TV, and search, yet again, for some inspiration. With female representation in STEM fields still lacking in the media, they might luck out and stumble upon a character like Amy Farrah Fowler from The Big Bang Theory, but her character traits aren’t much to be desired. After striking out in TV shows and movies, she might turn to the Internet. But, this is where another problem occurs. 

According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), data shows that only one in five U.S. households are connected to the Internet. The NTIA found that these households were more likely than their online peers to make less than $25,000 per year, identifying a socioeconomic gap preventing girls from accessing online education, entertainment, and role models in STEM.

Where does a girl look for a role model at this point? The problem here isn’t just that girls need more role models in STEM, it’s that female role models in STEM are not accessible to everyone. Reinvented Magazine is a free, print resource that breaks down these barriers for girls everywhere.

Our solution is three-fold: (1) Reinvented Magazine,  (2) our One-for-One Program, and (3) in-person events that bring STEM role models to life. These initiatives work collaboratively to ensure our content and interviews are accessible to all girls. 

Reinvented Magazine is a quarterly print magazine, which is also available digitally, that shares the stories and experiences of groundbreaking ladies and nonbinary individuals in the field, reports the latest news in science and technology, and paves the way for future generations of women to become leading pioneers in STEM. Each issue contains a feature article typically four to six pages in length that highlights a single woman or organization in STEM. In the past, we have featured the former CTO of the United States, Megan Smith, Founder of Adafruit, Limor Fried, Raven the Science Maven, IF/THEN Ambassador Myria Perez, and so many more. Our Everyday Changemakers series is where we highlight the stories of four or five ‘everyday’ women in STEM. We have interviewed ballerinas who are quantum physicists, food scientists, Miss America, and more in the past. This section is where we really let the experiences of women in STEM shine, and we always end each piece with their advice to our readers. 

Our magazine amplifies the stories of diverse women in STEM from all walks of life, which gives each of our readers a relatable role model for them to look up to. Our interviewees share the ups and downs of their journey along with their own advice to our young readers to help them feel less lost as they embark on their own journey. 

However, we don’t stop there. Our One-for-One Program aims to eliminate socioeconomic barriers preventing girls from gaining free access to those same stories and resources. All of the students impacted through this program are in low-income and underserved communities, where digital access isn’t consistent, and a print magazine gives the girl the opportunity to read out content whenever they want. Our team works directly with Title I schools and other organizations to meet students where they are and get free print copies of our magazine into their mailboxes. We develop long-lasting partnerships within underserved communities, leverage our partners to identify girls who’d experience the greatest impact from reading our magazine, and deliver a print copy of each magazine issue directly to those classrooms and students.

Lastly, we run hands-on, in-person events through our Princesses with Powertools program where professional women in STEM volunteer to teach young girls how to use their first powertool, a hand drill. The role models that are highlighted in the magazine are brought directly to our readers’ local communities to help them take what they read off the page and into real life. This goes beyond the initial spark of curiosity; it proves to young girls that they can be engineers and empowers them to continue getting hands-on with STEM.

Reinvented Magazine’s content is geared towards women and nonbinary persons aged 13 - 18 interested in STEM. At this age, many of our readers are trying to navigate their potential career paths, choose a degree program that best fits them, and figure out how to succeed in what they choose. Our magazine’s content is designed with all of this in mind. We intend to help inform our young readers of different STEM career paths and provide them with additional resources on how to pursue these careers, whether it be through traditional undergraduate college options, community college programs, trade schools, and more. 

As a result of our magazine being readily available online, it’s been hard for us to gain true statistics and demographic information on our general readership. However, we’ve had more success evaluating this same information for our One-for-One Program.

Of the students given access to Reinvented Magazine via the One-for-One Program:

• Approximately 65% are considered to be of low socio-economic status or are part of free and reduced lunch programs.

• Approximately 33% identify as Hispanic or Latinx.

• Approximately 26% identify as Black or African American.

• Approximately 10% identify as Pacific Islander.

• Approximately 25% identify as a person with a disability.

• 77% of the schools that participate in the One-for-One Program have a student population of over 50% considered to be low socio-economic status.

As mentioned in other responses, it’s clear to us that our readers are diverse, not just in gender and race, but in socioeconomic status. We intentionally select and feature interviewees who represent our readership as holistically as possible. When readers provide suggestions on who they’d like to see interviewed or topics they want to learn more about in future issues, we listen and get them added to the next issue’s lineup.

As a result, over the last four years, we’ve grown a vast community of young women interested in science and technology and have provided them with a constant source of empowerment and inspiration. Our readers have found their own voices and paths as a result of the stories we share in the pages of our magazine.

Growing up, our Team Lead, Caeley Looney,  was always so excited to receive the latest issue of Seventeen in the mail, but once she found her passion in engineering, she started losing interest and read fewer and fewer of its pages. Caeley was more interested in what was going on in the tech world than what was in style, but she still wanted to see that same, strong female presence. While Reinvented started as a way to fill that need, it quickly evolved into serving a higher purpose: reinventing the general perception of women in STEM fields for girls worldwide. As the team started building the first issue, we realized how important it was to show our readers that women in STEM can be anyone, regardless of shape, color, fashion style, or socioeconomic status. We aspired to tell women’s whole stories and amplify their voices as multifaceted women versus as the token ‘woman in STEM’. Our magazine expanded, our aim shifted towards amplifying the voices of diverse women in STEM so that we can provide girls aged 13 - 18 with relatable role models.

Our team is filled with the right people to lead this initiative because our volunteers are either the women who wished they had access to this magazine growing up or are our readers. This gives us the best opportunity to support the young women who are perusing our content because we are able to pull ideas from both sides of the spectrum. Our professional-level volunteers are able to recall what kind of information they wish they had access to while embarking on their STEM journeys, and our student-level volunteers share their current passions, interests, and questions, so we can work on articles that answer them.

Additionally, we leverage our social media presence and partnerships to constantly pull in new content ideas. We rely on our readers to tell us what they want to see in upcoming issues of the magazine and use social media to create polls where our followers can send us topics they want to learn more about.These topics range from special interests in specific STEM careers to soft skills, such as salary negotiation or crafting a resume. On top of this, our website gives our subscribers and the general public a place to ask for advice, submit their own guest articles for our magazine or online blog, or send us article requests. We then ask our volunteer-led writing team to pick an article topic that appeals to their own interests and passions and use that to build out the magazine’s table of contents, allowing us to stay engaged in a conversation with young girls rather than make a best guess at what we think they want to know more about.

Since its launch in 2019, Reinvented Magazine has been read by a total of 70,952 students and educators across all 50 states. Nearly 50% of our readers have received access to our magazine through our One-for-One Program, where we work through afterschool programs and classrooms to reach students in low-income communities. An additional 3,056 schools have received other printed STEM education resources, including our STEM-themed calendars, which were hung up in classrooms across the U.S. for 134,901 students to see on a daily basis.

Our greatest professional struggle to date has been financial.  The first two years of running our organization went pretty smoothly; we were able to raise funds by leveraging our community of supporters and that alone was enough to print our magazine and be impactful with our programs.  In the past year, however, the cost of developing our print resources has increased, leaving our organization struggling to be able to keep up with the demands of our community.  The cost of paper has nearly tripled, and our print runs for each issue, which used to cost us no more than $4,000, are now costing us upward of $10,000 for the same magazine quantity.  We often receive emails from our software providers, such as Issuu, where we host our digital magazine, that their prices are increasing to meet the current state of the economy.  This financial barrier grows larger as we look at our current team. Our organization is 100% volunteer-led, meaning we do not currently have any paid staff. While this was sufficient at the start, it’s becoming less sustainable as we begin to see knowledge gaps that are preventing us from expanding. For example, we don’t currently have any volunteers experienced in grant writing. This makes it difficult for us to compete with larger organizations that have expertise in this area and gain access to larger funding sources. 

This knowledge gap has also left us falling behind in developing important documents to keep Reinvented moving forward, including a funding strategy, staffing plan, and a strategic plan. We have witnessed an increased demand for our magazine and other resources by educators requesting them for their schools, so it is vital that we  strategically strengthen our One-for-One Program to support this demand and the many requests to come. We also acknowledge that we have a lot to learn on the nonprofit management and business side of this organization in order to do that. We hope that Solve and Tiger Global Impact Ventures will provide us with that next level of mentorship and educational support that will enable us to expand, serve a wider community of educators and students, and continue to deepen our impact with girls in STEM across the U.S.

As mentioned in previous sections, Caeley Looney is a woman in the STEM community. She grew up with a strong, female role model in STEM, her mom, and when she went away for college, she quickly realized how hard things become when you don’t have easy access to encouragement and support. Even though her mom was always just a phone call away, Caeley didn’t have her shoulder to cry on when someone made a mean comment or told her she didn’t belong. She learned that she was lucky and that most of her peers didn’t have their own role model or support system at home. Throughout her college and professional careers, Caeley faced the same gender bias and discrimination that many of her peers are not unfamiliar with. She knows what it’s like to walk into a meeting and be the only woman, the only person of color, or the only person with a disability in the room. Caeley has been supported by and has been the support system for countless others in this community. She’s heard stories from her friends and fellow students about their own experiences trying to break into STEM fields, personal struggles, and hardships; and she wanted to do something about it.

Along the way, Caeley learned that this disparity went deeper and further than she ever could have imagined. It wasn’t just gender, but race, disability, and socioeconomic status. She knew that she couldn’t fix every barrier preventing girls from pursuing STEM careers, but even if she could lower them to be slightly more accessible, it would make a difference. So, that’s what Caeley worked towards, with a larger focus on the socioeconomic barriers. 

Our team takes every opportunity to talk with educators to learn about their struggles in and out of the classroom. We ask them what our organization can do to serve them and their students with the greatest benefit. Caeley is an engineer by degree, not a teacher, and is no longer a student. It’s important to continually recognize that we don't know what we don’t know, so our team relies on the partnerships and community of educators and students that we’ve built over the last four years to influence our decisions and programs as we move forward.

Ruthe Farmer

As you start to delve deeper into the operations of many of today’s popular STEM education programs, you’ll see that students are required to already have a certain level of accessibility to participate. For example, if a student wants to get involved with an after school robotics program, there is a huge financial and time-based responsibility placed on the parents. From supporting transportation needs to meets or events, to a potential fee simply to participate, families encounter a number of barriers that limit their child’s access to in-person STEM programming that print resources, such as Reinvented Magazine, don’t create.

If you take another example where a student is trying to enroll in a free, online summer coding program, you’ll see that while tuition and transportation are no longer factors, new barriers arise. These barriers include the affordability of a laptop at home or not living in an area with consistent WiFi. While the internet is a never ending source of STEM-centered inspiration and information, many students don’t grow up with easy access to technology.

Reinvented Magazine and the One-for-One program bring print resources directly to students who don’t typically have access to STEM education programs. Students in rural or low-income areas have historically been excluded from STEM initiatives, and this lack of exposure for girls who have the least knowledge of what their career options are keeps them stuck in these same underserved areas they grew up in. Our print resources give them access to role models, information on different career paths, scholarships and internships, and how-tos for getting hands-on with STEM using items they can find around the house. There’s no fee, no internet or technology requirement, and no need for a parent to provide transportation.

Through the creation of Reinvented Magazine, we are truly able to meet students where they are at versus requiring them to come to us. We are providing the spark for students who may not even have access to quality STEM courses in their public schools to build curiosity and foster the development of the next generation of STEM leaders.

Our organization plans to put a strong focus on building out and increasing the reach of our One-for-One Program over the next year. 

Upon assessing the current capabilities of the organization, we decided to continue printing two magazines per year instead of the four we’ve historically printed for the remainder of 2023 and all of 2024. Now, new issues will be printed and released in the fall and spring of each year to align with the standard school year for most schools in the U.S. As a completely volunteer-run organization, this enables us to do two things. First, we can reallocate staff efforts away from the creation of the magazine during the summer and winter seasons to focus efforts on expanding our partnership base. Our volunteers will identify areas and communities that we haven’t reached with our resources yet, develop relationships with local school districts, libraries, and organizations that work directly with the students we are hoping to reach, and get them added to our One-for-One Program. Second, volunteers will be able to expand communications with current partners in the One-for-One Program. This will open up new conversations about how we can improve the way we track impact and allow us to focus on collecting more qualitative data from students reading our magazine. By developing stronger relationships with the teachers who bring our magazine to their classrooms, we can start asking questions about the impact of our work on the futures of their students.  We can even take requests directly from the students in these underserved areas to ensure that we are creating content that meets their needs directly. 

New partnerships built during the next 12 - 24 months will be kickstarted with back issues of our magazine. We currently have 5,500 print copies of back issues in stock that require funding to ship out to our One-for-One partners. Based on current impact data, we anticipate they will be read by nearly 75,000 students in these low-income and rural communities that we target through this program. By providing older issues of our magazine to new partners, we are giving students immediate access to the magazine and our role models’ stories while they wait for the next issue to come out.

By 2028, we expect to have at least 250 school districts regularly receiving new issues of Reinvented Magazine for each of their STEM classrooms and school libraries as members of the One-for-One Program.

We measure the success of Reinvented Magazine via the quantitative data associated with our readership and distribution, including the number of magazines purchased each issue, number of states and countries they are being read in, and the number of active print and digital subscribers we have each issue. In the past four years, we have printed 15 unique issues of Reinvented Magazine, with Issue 16 in the works.  We have distributed almost 20,000 print copies of our magazine and have a combined print and digital readership of over 36,000 students worldwide. Our magazine has readers in all fifty states, with a focus on rural and underserved communities, and over 30 different countries.

The success of our One-for-One Program is measured via the number of teachers, classrooms/organizations (i.e. girl scout troops, libraries), and students impacted. While the actual donation numbers may be lower in terms of print magazines donated, one print magazine in a classroom impacts at least 20 students who now have access to this resource. Our One-for-One Program has enabled us to donate print magazines and STEM-themed calendars to students within low income and underserved communities that wouldn’t have access to this information otherwise. Across the 15 issues currently printed, we have donated nearly 17,000 print magazines and 2,300 calendars to classrooms within the U.S. Our donated STEM-themed calendars have been viewed by nearly 135,000 students in the past three years, and our magazines have been viewed by nearly 34,000 students and educators to date. 

Moving forward, we hope to expand on this list of indicators for success by actively polling readers impacted by the One-for-One Program. Our team would like to answer questions about the impact of our magazine on students’ interest in furthering their STEM education and how drawn they are to pursuing a career in STEM down the line in order to assure our content is as impactful as possible. Additionally, we plan to engage an evaluator to develop large-scale surveys and hold focus groups to provide further impact data.

As previously mentioned, Microsoft Research found that girls lose interest in STEM as they get older. One of the core reasons they saw a loss of interest was a lack of role models and support from parents and educators. When that’s broken down into its two components, Reinvented Magazine helps from both sides.

In this same study, it was determined that girls who have role models in STEM are 1.4 times more likely to pursue opportunities in these fields, yet only 40% of the girls interviewed said they have a role model in STEM. Our magazine offers role models that span across a wide breadth of career and engagement levels. It’s important for girls to see role models at every step on the ladder, ranging from CEOs and c-suite executives to young professionals with relatable and accessible social media accounts. This allows our readers to follow their role models on and off the page, make deeper connections, and continue to be inspired.

On the other side, the majority of our paid subscribers for single magazine subscriptions are parents and all of our bulk subscriptions are sent directly to schools for educators to leverage in their classrooms. This study found that girls who are encouraged in STEM by a parent are 81% more likely to say they’ll study computer science in high school than girls who haven’t been encouraged. Continuing that thread, girls are three times as likely to say they’ll study computer science in college when both a parent and a teacher encourage them. It’s easy to encourage general curiosity and creativity, but without a STEM background, it can be a challenge for a parent to encourage their children to look into STEM topics specifically. Our magazine serves as a resource that parents and educators alike use as a tool, not just for their children and students, but for themselves to collaborate on STEM projects, learn more about STEM careers, and seek out opportunities in STEM.

Reinvented challenges assumptions about STEM identity development and current research on gender equity in STEM supports the goals and activities of the organization.  Through the creation of a magazine that provides STEM career information in an engaging way for girls, the resulting output leads to increasing interest and engagement in STEM careers for readers. Through our planned evaluation, we will be able to identify the specific ways in which Reinvented impacts STEM identity and interest.

Not applicable. 

Reinvented Inc. has a total of 83 volunteers working collaboratively to write, design, and print our magazine and other STEM resources. Our team, including our executive staff, is 100% volunteer-run and is comprised of women ranging from high school through late professionals.

In 2018, recent college graduate, Caeley Looney realized the need for a magazine geared towards women in STEM. After receiving teen's fashion magazines throughout high school and college, she began to lose interest and read less and less of their pages. She was more interested in what was going on in the tech world than what was in style, but she still wanted to see that same female presence... And thus, the idea for Reinvented was born. She and her team later created and printed their first issue in 2019.

Incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusivity into our organization’s work is essential in fostering a fair and inclusive environment for our team and our readers. Every aspect of the magazine and virtual content, including but not limited to, our online and print publication, social media, and community engagement is run by volunteers.

• 55% of Reinvented’s volunteers are under the age of 18 and 31% are between 18 - 24

• 27% of the organization is pursuing a bachelor’s degree, 10% is pursuing a masters or PhD, 10% are in industry, and 54% are currently pursuing a high school degree

• 14% of the organization is part of the LGBTQ+ community

• 75% of the executive leadership team identifies as a person of color

• 25% of the executive leadership team identifies as a person with a disability

Our organization’s leadership has a clear commitment to DEI, emphasizing its importance team-wide and in our resources, and we dedicate all necessary resources to implement inclusive practices. We have developed and enforced inclusive policies that promote equal opportunities for all of our volunteers, including the creation of anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies as outlined in our Code of Conduct. As new volunteer roles, especially those in leadership positions, open up, we offer fair and transparent interview practices and allow any and all interested individuals to apply and be considered.

As our organization grows, our aim is to establish measurable goals and have dedicated volunteers for tracking our progress on volunteer-wide DEI initiatives. We plan to collect and analyze data related to diversity metrics, including the representation of diverse individuals at various volunteer levels, exit surveys, and continuing to send out volunteer satisfaction surveys. We also intend to continue conducting monthly all-hands meetings where all of our team members can speak up about issues they witness within the organization and give thoughts on how we can improve.

Reinvented Inc. leverages media to engage young high school and early college level girls in STEM fields. Our target market is girls ages 14 to 21, which is considered a critical time when identities and passions about future career pathways are formed. Through the development of our print and digital magazine, social media, and in-person events, Reinvented is providing girls worldwide with inspiring and accessible real life role models of women and nonbinary persons in STEM. To ensure our message reaches girls everywhere, a magazine is donated to a classroom, library, or other nonprofit organization for each magazine that’s sold through our One-for-One Program.

Reinvented Inc.’s operations are currently funded through individual donations, event and program sponsorships, magazine subscriptions and advertising, and paid appearances by our Princesses with Powertools. This grant will enable us to increase each of these revenue streams through building internal capacity, our board of directors, and partner ecosystems. 

Our organization is also in the process of recruiting additional Board members to increase capacity for fundraising and partnerships.  With additional Board members to make connections and lend their financial and fundraising expertise, we will engage in a strategic planning process that outlines a financial plan for the organization within the next five years.

Additionally, in this past year, we’ve experienced a higher demand for our One-for-One Program and Princesses with Powertools Program than we can currently meet. We’ve proven to the broader education community that our resources and programs fit well inside and out of a classroom setting, and through this grant, and others in the future, we will be able to sufficiently meet the growing needs of the community we serve.

To date, Reinvented has been able to maintain the annual operating budget between $100,000 to $200,000 required to fund our programs. We raise funds from industry partners, individual donors, foundations, and other STEM leaders who are all committed to supporting our mission. We host an annual ‘Space Gala’ event which typically generates approximately 20% of our annual operating budget. We have an annual holiday calendar fundraiser centered around one of our other programs, Princesses with Powertools, that has generated approximately 10% of our budget. We also regularly partner with influencers in the women in STEM space to collaborate on and host additional fundraisers throughout the year.

We have been supported by the following industry partners: L3Harris Technologies ($20,000), Stanley Black & Decker ($10,000), BRPH ($7,500), Florida Tech ($2,500), Raytheon ($2,500), Space Perspective ($2,500), Lockheed Martin, Xena Workwear, Expedient, Vibration Institute, TotalBoat, and more.

Additionally, we sell magazine subscriptions to those outside of the One-for-One Program on both an individual basis and as school or classroom sets.