From the C-suite to camp, Cora Carmody ’75 encourages thousands of young women to embrace STEM studies.

When Stephanie Hall started work at Jacobs Engineering, her second-level boss and soon-to-be mentor, Cora Carmody ’75, suggested that Hall volunteer with the local Girl Scouts as a way toward work-life balance. Hall manages data centers worldwide, is her home’s primary breadwinner, and is raising two children. Adding more—for balance? Hall thought, Do I even have time for this? But Hall understood that Carmody was speaking from experience. She had led a Girl Scout troop while serving as chief information officer of a Fortune 500 corporation, traveling internationally, and raising her own children.

The following summer, at a Girl Scout day camp in partnership with Technology Goddesses—the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) nonprofit Carmody founded in 2002—Hall’s daughter took part in a camper showcase of what the kids had learned and accomplished that week. Watching her 6-year-old’s presentation, Hall was stunned: “This camp unleashed more than I’d ever given my daughter credit for. And she couldn’t wait to go back.”

Carmody has mentored not just employees but thousands of children and teens, nearly all girls, for more than two decades. At the peak of a long, successful career in tech, serving as CIO at four different major firms—and usually the only woman in the C-suite—Carmody sought to pass on her example and her knowledge to children as young as kindergarten.

She never intended to launch a nonprofit. “I had no idea what I was starting,” says Carmody. “I had never reported to a woman. My motivation was to change the statistics.”

The tech guru recalls mentorship of her own from Sidwell Friends math teachers like Florence Fasenelli. For Fasenelli’s class, she and a classmate traveled to the Lower School for a project to understand why girls were less likely to continue their math studies.

She doesn’t remember the conclusion—but she wasn’t one of those girls. Always ahead of her time, Carmody left Sidwell Friends a year early to join a special college program, then jumped to Johns Hopkins University to earn a combined bachelor’s and master’s in math. She regularly attended one class in cleats in order to get to varsity field hockey on time.

Carmody blazed up the ladder in the DC area, in Southern California, and in between, working on projects like the first space station. Then, about 25 years ago, a Scout troop approached Carmody and asked her to create a screen saver (remember those?) they could sell to raise money. “No,” she told them, “but I’ll teach you how to create one.”

That was the impetus for Technology Goddesses (TG), which has inspired and encouraged thousands of girls (and a few boys) in the decades since. Its specifics have evolved, but the tech is always cutting-edge: TG, which works closely with the Girl Scouts of America, has produced programs to show SoCal kids potential paths in coding, engineering, “loud technology,” the internet of things, cybersecurity, QR codes, online ethics, and more. In 2021, TG developed an AI badge for the Girl Scouts, and recently, the nonprofit has added units on deaf education and awareness.

During the school year, TG holds mentoring programs and field trips—to the Microsoft store, to Sony Pictures Entertainment, to Petco Park baseball stadium, behind the scenes at the Teen Choice Awards, and (when on the East Coast) the George Mason University TV and radio broadcasting program, and more. At each, they’ve found great female role models to talk with.

“If girls haven’t really grasped the importance of math or STEM by 3rd grade, or tried it at least,” Carmody says, “then they’re far less likely to continue that when they grow up.”

The stats are startling. Women received 20 to 22 percent of undergrad computer science degrees in 2025, down from 37 percent in 1984. Likewise, women in the computing workforce dropped from 40 percent in 1986 to 26 percent in 2017. In 2024, just 17 percent of those working in architecture and engineering were female. A big reason this matters: Studies show that STEM jobs pay well over twice as much as non-STEM jobs.

School-year activities at TG continue, but when Carmody moved to California in 2004, the group made summer day camps for preK–12 a main focus. Launched in 2005, the camp combines multimedia skills, web development, open-source-based graphic design, programming apps, and geocaching with more traditional camp activities, like arts and crafts, outdoor skills, and leadership.

Every camper needs a name tag: At TG, campers build their own with copper-tape paper circuits, so LED lights beam from the tag. Girls have made name bracelets for generations; at TG, the bracelets also translate letters into binary code. 

“Some say they’re the only girl in their math or tech classes at school. Still!” Carmody says. “Here, surrounded by other girls, it’s a safe place to be a geek.” The longtime CIO and nonprofit leader knows that needs and personalities differ, and while some girls thrive on group hikes, others require one-on-one attention.

“I credit Cora Carmody with helping to save my daughter this last summer, who had been through traumatic experiences, and I was uncertain would be able to participate in camp,” one parent wrote as part of nominating Carmody for an award. “To my incredible surprise, Cora mentored her in ways I could never imagine, and [my daughter] shined in building an inventory system for Tech Goddesses’ camp materials. [Cora] saw potential where I had not [and] welcomed her and so many other campers that might be outcast with ‘hidden’ diseases or conditions.”

Could such insight trace back to Quaker meetings at Sidwell Friends? Absolutely. Carmody recalls meetings as “so powerful—to be open to any kind of religious thought, or not,” inspiring spiritual and mental freedom and community, which is a lot like the “freedom and support and confidence” TG offers girls. “How else would I build a program, if it weren’t as open and tolerant to different ways of thinking and believing?” she says. “That’s a cultural makeup that gets into your bones.”

Carmody has followed through in the real world as well. When the first group of TG 7th graders graduated from college, she hired two at Jacobs Engineering. Both now serve on the TG board of directors.

Such longtime loyalty is not unique. Stephanie Hall, who now lives and works in Florida, still takes vacation time to fly out to the California camp most summers with one or both of her daughters, who are now finishing high school. She mentors the campers and says of Carmody, “Her ability to connect to youth is stellar.”

Carmody herself modestly says her own philosophy is “girls leading girls,” or essentially staying out of the way: “A 3rd grader won’t look at a Girl Scout leader or a mom or a teacher as a role model as much as they’ll look at a 5th grader who thinks tech is cool. And the 5th grader is more influenced by a junior high or high school student-mentor.”

So, she sets up a sort of Socratic teaching method: “Challenge the campers with things they don’t think they can do”—and add a major dose of fun and creativity. The end result is a “sustaining chain of mentorship.”

“Through TG camp and mentoring,” Carmody says, “it’s like I have a gazillion daughters—and a few sons.”