When most people think of the Girl Scouts, the first thing that comes to mind is … STEM education? Probably not. But the organization runs a robust program to introduce girls to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Girl Scouts can also learn about entrepreneurship starting at a young age. Educators, policymakers and advocates all stress the importance of encouraging women to pursue careers or academic programs in those subjects and of supporting their efforts to start businesses.

As the president and CEO of Girl Scouts of Northern New Jersey, Betty Garger oversees those programs. NJBIZ recently spoke with Garger about those efforts and how they operate. “We really are working for girls, especially in the younger ages – kindergarten through fifth – but then of course six through 12th grade, to let them know that not only should they learn about STEM because it’s what fuels us, but it’s also important because women are not in those roles,” she said. “We know that women hold very few engineering degrees, or if they do hold engineering degrees, they’ve been the only females in a male-dominated profession.

What follows is an excerpt from that conversation. The questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity. The full interview is available here.

NJBIZ: How long have you been doing this? Is it a recent addition to your curriculum, as it were, or is it is this a long-standing tradition?

Betty Garger: The Girl Scouts was founded in 1912 so we’re 109 years old and our founder Juliette Gordon low was a very innovative woman, so I would say that we’ve always been doing things that help our girls grow and help the country. … I’ve been with the girl scouts a long time, and I would also say that it’s interesting because things are cyclical but the emphasis on STEM is so important because we know that our society needs our future leaders to be well-versed in STEM whether or not they become scientists, engineers, financial analysts. A lot of women are in the financial environment so we’re also helping girls through the Entrepreneurship Program.

So I would say it’s a more of a focus, because we know that we have to fuel the leadership pipeline for the future and we know the girls are not equally represented in in all fields, but especially STEM fields, and we know that that’s an opportunity for growth.

And it’s also a way for girls to expand their thinking, and whether or not you become someone in the STEM field, that creativity, that logical thinking, that problem solving that’s important in life, no matter what you do.

Q: How does the entrepreneurship component to fit in? Do you actually bring in people running startups or investors? How does it work?

A: That’s a great question. We bring women in – especially women, but men too – to talk to our Girl Scouts, especially in the middle and high school ages, about career paths, about things that they can do. When it was in-person, we held a speed panel, like speed networking. We had 30 women in the room, and then the 30 Girl Scouts go around two minutes with each woman and hear about what they do. At the end, one of the facilitators asked, ‘so what did you learn?’ and one of the Girl Scouts raised her hand and said I learned none of these women are doing what they thought they would be doing.

And so, for us, that was so fascinating because, even at such a middle school age right now, especially if you’re a very good student, you’re kind of told that you have to decide what you want to do. And so it’s interesting for the Girl Scouts to get that – I can try something even if it doesn’t work – that’s the entrepreneurial spirit. I can try something and it might not work, but I’ll figure it out and I’ll move on.

We have women who’ve started their own businesses, are on the corporate track, you know so that girls can see what is available, because we all know, if you can’t see it you don’t know you can be. So we want girls to get so much experience learning from other amazing women that have had their start in Girl Scouts or unfortunately were never able to be girl scouts but are able to share that with our Girl Scouts.

Q: I was going to ask you about support generally from the business community and from higher education institutions. It sounds like this has been fairly well received and you don’t have a real problem getting volunteers people to come in and share their expertise.

A: Yes, we have a lot of people who want to share their expertise. What we do need and could always use more of is actual troop volunteers — people who will work with the girls during the school year or year-round. … Obviously the past year has been extremely challenging and our volunteers are amazing. I mean they’ve been living through a pandemic and whatever has happened to them on the home front, working with their own children if they have them with homeschooling and virtual school. And April is volunteer appreciation month, so I want to say, I appreciate our volunteers, they are true entrepreneurs in the in the sense of helping girls start up their own careers and their own thought process, but they have really stepped up this past year to help our girls navigate the challenges that we’re all facing.

Q: And how did the girls respond? Are these programs popular or do you trouble convincing them to try, for example, the cyber sleuth program that you’ve got coming up.

A: They are popular. We make them fun. We make them interesting. It’s not a continuation of school. It’s something different, and if you build it, they will come. If you do something and word of mouth is that it’s a great program, we had a lot of fun. And we do things that people don’t even think as STEM. Like we have in the winter maple sugaring. And so they come to one of our camps and they learn all about the maples sugaring process from tapping a tree to how it gets filtered and that’s STEM.

You don’t say ‘oh, you know you’re going to learn about STEM today,’ but you do learn about STEM. We’re really making sure that it’s packaged as something that’s interesting to the girls, but something that helps them learn a new skill or something that they may want to explore further later.

Q: And have you given any thought at or do you in fact tailor it to the New Jersey economy? For example, the pharmaceutical industry, the life sciences industry are huge here — a big part of the economy. Is there any discussion about how to bring in those kinds of subjects?

A: We have been fortunate that we’ve gotten financial support from some of our pharmaceutical companies and before the pandemic we were working closely with one that recently merged. So we’re still navigating those waters.

Girls went to the Allergan facility and worked with the IT team there, that was one of our coding seminars. So they got to see the corporate facility, they got to interact with people who work there, and it was really a great experience for the Girl Scouts but also for the Allergan employees as a way to give back, a way to interact, in a way to share their knowledge with others.

Those are partnerships we’re really looking to continue and would love anyone in the area that would be interested in hosting Girl Scouts for something like that. We run the gamut from programming, from the outdoors to STEM to life skills to entrepreneurship.

Our girls really love those experiences and for Girl Scouts whose parents don’t work in a corporate environment it’s such an eye-opener to see, especially, right here in New Jersey, what fuels our economy.