Navisite Scholarship Program Helps Women Pursuing Careers In STEM

Navisite’s Next Steminist scholarship program awards three women pursuing an education in STEM a $10,000 scholarship. The Andover, Mass. company is accepting applicants through May 17.

Navisite is accepting applications for its Next Steminist scholarship program for a second year. The program awards three women pursuing an education in STEM a $10,000 scholarship. Applicants will have until May 17 to apply.

So far, the company is already impressed by what they’ve seen from the young women applying.

Gina Murphy, president and chief technology officer at Andover, Mass.-based Navisite, a member of CRN’s MSP Elite 150.

“Every entry, not only told us about the classes that are taking, but told us what they want, how they want to make a difference in the world. And it was so inspiring for all of us. When we when we saw the videos, we heard their story. And even though we‘re playing a small part of it, we’re just extremely proud to be to be continuing this process.”

Navisite is looking for applicants who identify as female, are ages 25 and under with 3.0 GPA or higher. The application pool is open to high school seniors/graduates planning to attend a four year full-time undergraduate program in the next academic year or students that are already enrolled.

Murphy’s best advice for applicants is to lean into your personal story.

“Don‘t be intimidated by it. Everybody has a great story to tell of where they came from, and more importantly, where they want to go with their career and how they want to get there. I think that people sometimes shy away from it, I would suggest to run to it because there’s an army of people there to help support you along the way. And when they reach their goals and they‘re continuing down the path. If they can continue to mentor the people that are behind them coming in. I just think this this ecosystem would be like no other.”

Murphy says just seeing the applications shows the progress made for women pursuing careers in STEM.

“I think that the one thing that made me most proud through this whole Steminist scholarship fund was to see the entries that came in, and how far advanced they are. When I was their age, doing this, there just wasn‘t a lot of opportunity. And I’ve been very lucky to work with Mark Clayman, our CEO and our entire leadership team, which is made up of a lot of females. And it makes me extremely proud that that is the case.”

She says the support is strong throughout the company.

“When we put things like feminist gear in our NaVi store, all of the men buy it for their wives, for themselves, for their kids, for their daughters. And we feel fully supported in our culture. So, for us to be able to have that is fantastic. But even more for us to be able to back a scholarship series like this and be in our year two, is really, really important to us culturally for the entire company.”

She hopes other companies will also jump on the train to support women pursuing a secondary education in STEM.

“We think the word is getting out. And we hope a lot of other companies will follow suit. Because if we can all band together and work together, collectively, I think we can make a huge difference.”

Now that the company is offering the scholarship for the second year in a row, it’s looking at ways to enhance it in the future and is considering opening up mentoring opportunities.