It’s been a great year in FIRST Ladies! With 44 regional partner teams from 7 countries, we’ve really enjoyed connecting with ladies and supporters from around the world! Here are some highlights from our season:

FIRST Ladies Game Night (December 2021)

After the success of our 2020 Game Night, we decided to host another in December of 2021. It was a great way to connect in a more casual setting with other ladies in FIRST, and we quickly bonded as we laughed and played games! We started off the night with a Kahoot about famous women in STEM before splitting off to play Jackbox games (Quiplash was a crowd favorite), and by the end everyone truly bonded and enjoyed the night. No Zoom fatigue here!

Greater Pittsburgh Regional Panel (March 2022)

Historically, we’ve held an annual women in STEM panel at the Greater Pittsburgh Regional (GPR), except for when we were unable to due to COVID-19. This year, we were excited to be able to resume in-person programming and hold our panel, but with a twist! We invited regional partner teams attending GPR to take part in a discussion about personal experiences in STEM from female mentors and students. We had representatives from 3504 Girls of Steel, 117 Steel Dragons, 4085 Technical Difficulties, and 7460 Avi and Friends, and it was really interesting to hear first-hand experiences from women in STEM, everything from how to deal with sexism in the workplace to how to deal with difficult workloads and find supportive communities. We all got to know each other over the course of the panel, and we also enjoyed talking with members of the audience who were passionate about supporting women in STEM. It was a great experience all around, and we can’t wait to hold another panel in 2023! Read more about it here.

Menstrual Products Drive with M.E. FIRST at GPR and Buckeye (March 2022)

We were really excited to participate in Space Cookies’ M.E. FIRST campaign to place free products in the bathrooms at the GPR and Buckeye venues. We support equity and were very excited to be able to play our part in helping the FIRST community!

Buckeye Regional FIRST Ladies Meetup (March 2022)

We hosted a casual FIRST Ladies meetup at Buckeye, where we invited members from various teams to come and talk about their experiences in FIRST over lunch. We had a lot of fun making new friends and bonding with each other! It was a great way to strengthen our FIRST Ladies community!

Worlds (April 2022)

After our great experience at the GPR and Buckeye meetups, we held a similar event at Worlds to bond with existing regional partner teams and recruit new teams. We even made FIRST Ladies name tag stickers for the occasion! It was a great end to the season, and we had tons of fun meeting ladies in FIRST from across the world (and being awestruck by the championship robots)!