{"id":29997,"date":"2017-10-18T08:00:52","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T13:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hrblock.com\/tax-center\/?post_type=newsroom&#038;p=29997"},"modified":"2023-03-02T14:26:37","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T20:26:37","slug":"web-experience-director-introduces-girls-wide-world-stem","status":"publish","type":"newsroom","link":"https:\/\/www.hrblock.com\/tax-center\/newsroom\/around-block\/about-us\/web-experience-director-introduces-girls-wide-world-stem\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: Web experience director introduces girls to wide world of STEM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Filling the STEM gap for today\u2019s girls\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ewxi1KavjFQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>When Zerlina Jackson\u2019s friend invited her over for breakfast, Jackson didn\u2019t know breakfast would include a pitch to volunteer with the Girl Scouts. As her friend told Jackson the different ways she could get involved, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gsksmo.org\/en\/events\/stem-programs\/spark-events.html\">Spark Events<\/a> designed to expose girls to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers caught Jackson\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is so much more to STEM than lab coats and coding,\u201d said Jackson, director of web experience for H&amp;R Block.<\/p>\n<p>Even though she grew up loving computers, as a young girl she didn\u2019t know about many career options that could incorporate her interest in computer technology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I was younger I was [really] into technology and computer technology. It\u2019s just always been one of those things that has just pulled me in. But I didn\u2019t really know where to go. I never really had an outlet as a young girl to be able to explore those options,\u201d said Jackson. \u201cSo me giving back and volunteering my time so that other young women can have that outlet was a no brainer to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Filling the STEM gap for today\u2019s youth<\/h2>\n<p>When Jackson brought up the idea of hosting a Spark Event, her boss, vice president of interactive Amy Hu, was very supportive. With Hu\u2019s backing, and with help from other colleagues inside and outside the company, last week Jackson hosted a Spark Event to show girls what she does and widen their horizons about STEM careers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe so appreciate the dedication and excitement Zerlina and Amy had for sharing their work and expertise with Girl Scouts. These kinds of events help build a passion in girls for following STEM careers,\u201d said Anne Einig, director of Girl Scouts of northeast Kansas and northwest Missouri.<\/p>\n<p>After a tour of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrblock.com\/tax-center\/newsroom\/around-block\/hr-block-headquarters-celebrates-10-years-downtown\/\">H&amp;R Block world headquarters<\/a>, the girls heard from Jackson and Hu on their jobs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the young ladies said, \u2018you talked a lot about STEM. What is STEM?\u2019 And it kind of made me chuckle. Usually what people think when they think of STEM is I\u2019m probably a forensic scientist or I\u2019m a doctor or an engineer that\u2019s actually building a car, but STEM is in everything,\u201d said Jackson.<\/p>\n<p>But Jackson and Hu didn\u2019t just talk about STEM; they also promised to give the girls some hands-on experience. After pizza came the hands-on highlight: working in teams, the girls designed and presented their own cookie websites.<\/p>\n<p>As for where the girls could go in their futures, Jackson suggested they look a little broader and deeper than the usual suspects.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mentioned to the girls, you may hear STEM when it comes to Apple and Microsoft and Facebook, but every company is concerned about STEM. When you have a better technology that clients want to use, they want to work with you more often,\u201d said Jackson. \u201cSTEM careers are everywhere. You can be STEM anywhere you work, any company, any role.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In her role with interactive marketing specifically, Jackson said they build a lot of things with technology and measure everything they do.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe enable marketing with technology and we measure everything, so I have a little saying that we put the M in STEM, but it\u2019s really true because we\u2019re do a lot of calculations and math to figure out if what we\u2019re doing is actually working,\u201d said Jackson.<\/p>\n<h2>Following the steps to STEM, or not<\/h2>\n<p>The path to Jackson\u2019s job in STEM at H&amp;R Block wasn\u2019t a straightforward one. Although she said she always loved computers, even remembering when they first brought them in to her school, she wasn\u2019t sure of her career path.<\/p>\n<p>After getting her Associate\u2019s in computer information systems and Bachelor\u2019s in computer science from the University of Michigan, she started working at Domino\u2019s Pizza. That\u2019s where the chief information officer suggested she may want to be a coder one day, and she politely declined.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCoding just wasn\u2019t for me. You could miss one semi-colon and it just messed up your whole day,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n<p>Although she didn\u2019t like coding, a database marketing course she took while getting her Master\u2019s in management and marketing pointed her toward her next career steps.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought, this is kind of neat. The idea of using technology to enable marketing was so exciting to me. Domino\u2019s had just launched online ordering so I scheduled a meeting with the vice president of precision marketing at the time to discuss how I could merge the two things I enjoyed,\u201d said Jackson.<\/p>\n<p>Now, she\u2019s managing a team of web experts at H&amp;R Block. And although she\u2019s not a developer, she acknowledges that being exposed to coding early on helped her in her career path.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have a very strong admiration for all of our developers here. They do amazing things every day that help us all meet our goals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Whether it\u2019s earlier in life as a young girl or early in a career as a recent grad, Jackson knows the benefit of having someone who has some experience to help guide a career.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou need someone to get the momentum started so you can navigate your options,\u201d said Jackson, who is doing that for girls who are now looking up to her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Zerlina Jackson\u2019s friend invited her over for breakfast, Jackson didn\u2019t know breakfast would include a pitch to volunteer with the Girl Scouts. As her friend told Jackson the different ways she could get involved, the Spark Events designed to expose girls to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers caught Jackson\u2019s interest. \u201cThere is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":418,"featured_media":29998,"menu_order":0,"template":"","tags":[19308],"news-categories":[23376,23377],"class_list":["post-29997","newsroom","type-newsroom","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-make-every-block-better","news-categories-around-block","news-categories-about-us"],"acf":{"post_rest_thumbnail_alt_id":null},"yoast_head":"<title>Zerlina Jackson Introduces Girl Scouts to STEM | H&amp;R Block Newsroom<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Find out how H&amp;R Block&#039;s web experience director influenced girls in STEM. 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