While the widespread availability of support programs for building a female presence in the STEM workforces is a comparatively recent emergence, the importance of women in these fields naturally dates back as far as the fields themselves.

At this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Susie Armstrong, SVP of Engineering at Qualcomm Inc., sat down with Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to talk about her time in the STEM business, some of her early inspirations and the work she’s involved with at Qualcomm to encourage more women to follow a similar path.

Laying groundwork

Armstrong began by sharing some of her background, including her role in Qualcomm’s development of effective mobile data transmission. “In the ’90s … Qualcomm created the first viable mobile voice system,” she recalled, along with the company’s request that she come up with some further applications for the technology. “In three months, we got [mobile data] running … and it really took off from there.”

These days, she’s also involved with Qualcomm’s initiatives to provide STEM exposure to careers in software and engineering to kids who might not otherwise have a chance to learn about them. Some of these highlighted ways included day-visits to Qualcomm centers, with demonstrations of the work involved in different careers, as well as a chance to build a robot and the girls-only Qcamps, which provide a summer of STEM-oriented projects.

“It’s proven to be really impactful not just to the kids, but to their teachers, principals and administrators,” Armstrong stated.

Building futures

Further along in the development cycle of these potential STEM careers are Qualcomm’s employee networks for women only. “They have been very impactful for both the women that are in them, and the women and men in the management around them,” while also providing opportunities “to make the rest of us understand what sorts of barriers these women face,” Armstrong said.

She was delighted by the turnout at this year’s Grace Hopper conference and to see how it had grown from previous years. “It’s so inspirational to walk into a conference center and see … [this many] confident, competent women, and companies that are eager to hire them,” she said

As the interview drew to a close, Armstrong was asked about any standout heroes she’d encountered in the STEM field. Though she found it difficult to narrow down the possible answers, having a number of STEM heroes in both genders, Armstrong felt that her mother was probably the most influential, as “whenever she came across something that didn’t work, she would take it apart and find out why.”

Watch the complete video interview, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Anita Borg Institute’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Photo by SiliconANGLE