At North Bay Science Discovery Day oin Santa Rosa, n March 7, Alyssa Huang plans to do more than run a booth. She wants to change the way kids — especially girls and under-resourced students — see themselves in science.
“My project is I’m handing out STEM kits” to kids ages 9 to 12, said Huang, a North Bay high school student and 17-year-old junior. The idea is simple: “Give out a science exposure so that they can find science fun at this age … and feel like they can become more confident in their science abilities.”
Huang’s booth will be hands-on and kid-friendly, with quick lessons and eye-catching experiments. “I’m gonna teach kids about the science behind UV beads and invisible ink,” she said. “As well as show them how to use a microscope.” One crowd-pleaser, she expects, will be hatching baby brine shrimp and putting them under the microscope “for kids to see.”
Science Discovery Day, held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, is designed to draw families into STEM learning with interactive exhibits from schools, nonprofits and major employers. The event’s “Plan Your Day” guide describes a full day of activities for youth and families, with many exhibits aimed at upper-elementary and middle-school ages. 
For Huang, the STEM kits are a vehicle for something that can be harder to measure than a test score: confidence.
When she joined her middle school math team, she said, she was “one of the only girls,” and the experience shook her in ways she didn’t anticipate. “Even though I didn’t have any differences in skills … I was having trouble finding partners for any sort of activities,” she said. “It really made me lose confidence in my abilities even though I was one of the top scorers on the team.”
So she went looking for evidence. Huang surveyed students in her grade, asking girls and boys to rate their confidence in math and science from 1 to 5. The result surprised her. “Most girls in my grade answered two to three whereas most boys … answered four to five,” she said. “And a lot of the girls in my grade are very strong in math and science.”
Her experience echoes what researchers have found: confidence and a sense of belonging can be powerful drivers of who persists in STEM — and who opts out, even when ability is not the issue. 
Huang started digging into workforce numbers, too. She points to a figure she found in her research: women make up only about 28% of the STEM workforce — a statistic often cited as shorthand for the gender imbalance in technical fields. Global estimates are in that range: the Society of Women Engineers, citing the World Economic Forum, reports women made up 28.2% of the global STEM workforce in 2024. 
U.S. definitions of “STEM” vary, but federal workforce data also show persistent gaps. The National Science Foundation’s Science and Engineering Indicators report that in 2021, 17.6% of employed U.S. women held STEM occupations, compared with 30.0% of employed men — meaning women were substantially less likely than men to be working in STEM jobs. 
Huang also worries about a second pipeline problem: opportunity. “I also learned a lot about the socioeconomic STEM gap,” she said, describing how unequal access to enrichment, equipment and mentorship can compound over time. NSF data underscore that underrepresentation shows up across demographic groups, and Pew Research Center has documented that Black and Hispanic workers remain underrepresented in the U.S. STEM workforce compared with their share of all workers. 
That’s where Huang decided to act.
“The program that I started is called Aspire Ed,” she said. AspireED’s website describes a student-led effort that provides free STEM learning resources, community science events, mentorship and support for students who may not otherwise get early exposure to science. 
Huang described AspireED’s approach in practical terms: “We offer many different resources … an online resources page with the best math and science videos,” she said, aimed at helping students find trustworthy lessons for fundamentals like “fractions, multiplication, all of that.” She said AspireED also offers scholarships for summer programs and “a college mentorship program for people who are under-resourced.”
Closer to home, she teaches. “I teach math and science classes to kids in the Canal District,” she said, and she also works with students through Next Generation Scholars, teaching math to sixth- through eighth-graders and planning additional instruction for younger students.
At Science Discovery Day, Huang said she wants families to come by not just to watch, but to participate — and to take something home. “Everybody reads what you have to write — they should totally come by my exhibitor booth … to get a free STEM kit,” she said. She’s also preparing instructions “in English but also translated to Spanish so it’s more accessible for everyone.”
She’s candid about the barrier many youth-led programs face: funding. “All of the classes that I’m teaching are really expensive,” Huang said, adding that “it has been kind of hard to get grant money.” She welcomes donations and partners willing to help her keep the programs growing.
Still, her message stays focused on the earliest years — and on the belief that the “STEM gap” is not inevitable.
“What I found … is that the main cause … is a lack of confidence,” Huang said. “This is a very solvable problem.”