Kristen Railey founded Girls Who Build in 2014 to increase the number of women in engineering through creative, applied, and hands-on curricula, offering courses in wearable tech and cameras. In addition, Kristen is a PhD student in mechanical engineering in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program and a joint National Defense Science and Engineering and Draper Labs fellow. Previously, Kristen was a technical staff member in the undersea group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT.

Solution: Girls Who Build is a series of creative and applied engineering curricula developed by engineers, tested with local girls, and published online for open access. Topics focus on things girls love, like music, and on the problems they want to solve, like climate change.