We will welcome Lisa Abel-Palmieri, CEO - Boys and Girls Club of Western PA (BGCWPA), to talk about its new partnership with NVIDIA to bring artificial intelligence (AI) education to students.
NVIDIA and BGCWPA entered into a three-year partnership with the goal of expanding access to AI education to more students, particularly those from underserved and underrepresented communities. Core to the collaboration is the creation of an AI Pathways Toolkit to make it easy for Boys & Girls Clubs nationwide and other education-focused organizations to deliver the curriculum to their participants.
Comprising 14 clubhouses and two Career Works Centers, BGCWPA’s programs, services and outreach serve more than 12,000 youth ages 4-18 across the region.
Transcription:
Good afternoon, everyone. Happy Friday in May from Pittsburgh. very thrilled to wrap up the week with our guest today, I will formally introduce Lisa in a moment. But before we get started, I just want to give to a little bit of housekeeping as well as appreciation, deep appreciation for Huntington bank for the work that they do each and every day across Southwestern Pennsylvania and beyond, as well as their belief in support of our work that we do, and telling stories, and making sure that the world knows about what's happening in innovation in Pittsburgh, and then 40 by 80. That's the wholly owned subsidiary of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. It's the latitude and longitude of Pittsburgh. And that's where we focus on all things that are tied to education, and learning and apprenticeship. And soon apprenticeships, you're gonna hear more about that as well as different ways that we support entrepreneurs. So we've muted your microphones. And we've done that on purpose, just to be considerate for our guests. And also, I asked that this is not a time to sell your wares. This is a time to just focus on our guests. So just sit back, listen, and if you have any question, Jonathan Kersting is with us each and every day. He's vice president of all things, media and marketing at the tech Council. And he's gonna keep his eye on the chat. So on that note, I am very thrilled to bring to the forefront. Can I call you doctor? I mean, can people work on their PhDs, I sort of like to give them a little bit of reverence for that work. So I'd like to say Dr. Lisa Palmieri, but I'll call her visa through the show. But just so that everyone understands that she did work hard and got a PhD. And I think that's, that's not only noble, it's exhausting. And it's sometimes traumatic, and it's very honorable. So thank you, he. So we've known each other and you've done the tech council through few iterations of your journey. And what I'd like to do is, first of all, welcome, thank you. She's the president, and CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of southwest of Western Pennsylvania, actually, not just Southwestern Pennsylvania, of Western. So let's go back in time, tell everyone a little bit about your career, your journey, so they know sort of how this is all built up in terms of where you are right now.
Well, Audrey, it's so great to see you and your team, obviously high have a long history and love of Pittsburgh Technology Council, and what you all stand for thanks for all you do as well to bring us together. And I like to say that being at Boys and Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania is like the third chapter in my career, I spent the first 10 years of my career in corporate and higher education extent as a government contractor really shifted to formal K to 12 education for the second chapter, in this third chapter is really about activating and advancing the potential of all youth working with Boys and Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania and an ecosystem of amazing partners, all through, you know, opportunities, like remake learning and the Pittsburgh leadership collaborative, the tech council 40 by 80. So it's just wonderful to come together to be here with you to this afternoon. So thanks for having me on the show.
So just real quickly, have you been holding up since COVID? Because you know, you do a lot of things that are really, you know, people seeing each other a lot of experiential work. So how have you been doing?
We have been really honored to be able to serve so many families throughout the pandemic, really starting in March 2020, as a provider of daytime support services for essential personnel. And you know, to use everybody's favorite word we have seriously pivoted, where it makes sense to meet the needs of the community. And so we've been in person for over a year now, and we operated learning hubs during the school year, our buildings were over 13 hours a day. And, you know, we're doing whatever it takes to meet the needs of the community, whether that be about supporting food insecurity, providing academic support for sports and recreation, or these amazing STEM programs, like we're going to talk about today.
Yeah, yeah, I've been paying attention and I see all the things that you've been doing so so let's talk let's, you know, we're excited to talk about artificial intelligence robots and how nividia fits into your plans and your relationship that spawn through PPG. there's just lots of pieces that sort of knit together, maybe spend a few minutes just really talking about the breadth of your program and the why, why you do what you do.
Yeah, thanks for asking Audrey. I actually have a few slides to show some of you who might not be familiar with Boys and Girls Clubs and what we do And I'll share a few of these. And we'll try to keep this as conversational as possible. So for those of you that aren't familiar with Boys and Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania or you have a impression about us, let me clarify what it is that we do and show you how we've really diversified our programs, services and outreach. We've been around since 1888. So we are a legacy organization, long standing partner of United Way. And one of the original kind of founding boys clubs in the country. There are 1600 Boys and Girls Clubs in the United States and VGC. WPA is the 15th largest club. We've also been identified by Boys and Girls Clubs of America as one of the sort of top 10 leading youth workforce development clubs in the country. And so we have our standalone buildings. We have seven of those in neighborhoods across the Allegheny and Somerset County areas. We also are in school based clubhouses. So we are also inside of seven school districts and charter schools. In addition to that, we're in over 15 day time locations. So another grouping of school districts and community partner sites, we have our youth workforce development programs of which the Nvidia AI toolkit spun out of. And then last but not least, we've had a long standing relationship, a wonderful partnership with Allegheny County DHS, on our juvenile justice programs. When we think about STEM programs in particular that really have led us to this amazing and wonderful partnership with Nvidia. We break our STEM programs down into sort of five categories were led by an awesome director of STEM education and their team. And they really focus on exposure level and specialty programs, programs for school aged kids daily after school, as well as high school programs, which namely right now our our STEM Ambassadors Program that we partner with Carnegie Mellon CS Pathways Program, in our children's village on, we have this amazing artificial intelligence pathways Institute and Tina stellarator. The toolkit is really spinning out of and then our Vex robotics programs, as well as our computer science and it programs, utilizing, you know, curriculum like the with Google program, which is super exciting.
What is Vex me?
So? Yeah, so
Vex is a style of robotics competition, I guess you could say look, sorry about that. In the past, I've had amazing partnerships. I see Terry here today from girls of steel, and typically leveraging our like, FIRST Robotics and then we have Lego robotics. Next is the other one of the approaches to robotics. It's out there.
Okay. Thank you. Sure.
So yeah, we have lots going on with STEM. And, you know, that really is building us up to what happened in 2019. So the origin of this really started in 2019. One Boys and Girls Clubs want a PA smart grant from Governor Wolf's office to advance STEM education. And this is when we really got connected deeply to PPG Industries and Hampton School does tend to township School District. And we were able to engage over 70 PPG staff. And we're currently working on that program and expanding into key PPG markets and locally around internships and pre apprenticeships. You can see some of the amazing kiddos here that we serve. And the key here with this program from the beginning, Audrey is to really work to democratize AI and stem for kids that have been traditionally kind of underrepresented, underprepared, and give them another pathway in addition to what they have experienced within the school day, to learn about these careers and get that mentorship. And so, you know, I just have to show you because you know, it's about the kids. So you can see a group of our kiddos in 2019, learning from experts at CMU, getting to engage with these cool funky robots. And then they all worked on this, these Capstone presentations. So I love this one that these four amazing young people developed. For those of you that can't read it, it says How can AI be used to improve CRISPR in order to aid in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's? So these young people picked the topics that they wanted to explore. They learned about how to use Human Centered Design, how to pitch their idea, build a budget, build a plan. And then from there, the folks at PPG helped us pick the top like, projects that we can incubate during the school year in our teen accelerator program, where the young people got office space, both in person and this year virtually. And they work up to 15 hours a week and we pay them to build out an incubate their hardware or software projects. So from all of that 92% of those young people, the first few years also earn certificates from Carnegie Mellon robotics Academy, and we paid out over $80,000 in stipend. So that's one of the things that makes this program is that we pay the kids So that that makes a difference maker for a lot of kids who traditionally haven't been able to be a part of these things.
So how can you describe loosely the demographics of the kids and sort of where they come from? And when you say western Pennsylvania, are you going all the way up to Erie? How far up is western Pennsylvania? I can tell your coverage.
Yeah, so our clubhouses and programs are specifically focused locally, in Allegheny and Somerset County, however, we have our alliance of Pennsylvania alliance of clubs. And I work very closely with my friend Joe at St. Mary's, which is, you know, in a little bit of a northern rural area. And, you know, we've looked to continue to expand it Boys and Girls Clubs, we've doubled in size, actually, by 50%. In the last two and a half years. And especially in light of the pandemic, we have more and more school districts and community partners that want to work with us on these types of programs. So we'd love for that expansion to continue.
So when you go back, when you go to the that, the slide before this, and I see everyone who's dressed better than any entrepreneur that we have the pleasure of hanging with, they look amazing. And taking this so seriously, do they do any of these projects find another pathway into a life of potentially being commercialized?
You know, we're not at that point yet. However, we now have young people that have been participating in AI pi for two years. And they are at the point this summer, where, where we have a group of them doing corporate internships, and a number of members and a number of the member companies representative. And that is so exciting that they're getting the opportunity to really take the skills they've gained in love, and really put it into an internship and possibly life changing experience, it's going to set them up after high school.
And so these include tell people a little bit about some of the places and the ages of where these people, you know, the ages of the kids and some of the places where the internships are because I want people to get a feel for how young you really go. So we do focus on high school students.
So it's ages 14, and we do have up to some 19 year olds that are technically still high school seniors. And we're placing at 17 to 19 year olds in the corporate internships. And so you know, there are companies that have more of a readiness than others. I know, the tech Council, for example, has participated in the high school internships for years. And high school kids could like really surprise you, you know, they can, with caring mentors and supportive programs like this, they can kind of blow you away. It's a it's part. And part of this is also connected to partner for works learner program. So we are an authorized provider of the learner program. And so it's just delightful to see that after two years, these young people who, you know, this photo is from 2019. So the a lot of the kids in this photo are now 17 years old, and they're getting the opportunity to be inside of a company this summer. And so some of those companies like Accenture is one of our partners shout out to this, Nicole. So ascensor is going to be a virtual internship. But for example, some of our other partners are going to be in person because their company is already kind of returning to work in person. So the goal in the future is that we're going to be in person as much as possible, because there is something to be said, when an intern has the opportunity to actually like go into an office, learn those executive skills, take an elevator to the top of a large building, that this summer is a hybrid approach to internships.
That's great. And so the mentors are on your team, or how do you cultivate the mentors.
And I think this is where we see these signature partnerships with PPG. And Nvidia in particular, where their leadership really has a commitment to, you know, mentor and work with young people. So a lot of the mentors that we've currently had, are focused from particularly PPG and Nvidia. And, you know, PPG is really focused on helping us expand the program here locally in western Pennsylvania, into a few key markets where PPG has offices, for example, in Detroit, and Vidia is really our key partner that's helping us level this up to expand it nationally, to clubs across the country. So it's, it's so exciting to work with both of them. And, you know, moving this program forward,
we've had quite a few people that beat the head of the PPG foundation. On the other day, we have environmental health and safety from PPG. They really are just amazing corporate citizens. And, and here in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, of course, we're selfish about it, but they all around the world. They have deeper touch points. So that's pretty amazing. So let's let's we'll back just a little bit and we'll get to some of your other slides in a second. What during COVID? Since you've been working so hard, and having all these different touch points, and all these different clubs and all these different programs and working diligently to keep people connected, what what have you seen in young people? Is there anything that you can talk about, like in terms of any of the changes in in kids right now? How have you, you know, obviously, you've adapted to serve them. But I know that you talk a lot about social skills, and you talk about, you know, interpersonal relationships and, and what that means in terms of successful opportunities, or what are you seeing?
There's a lot of shifts here, and there's a lot to say, Yeah. You know, teens right now, in particular, high school students, they don't need care. So when, generally, so when parents are either working at home, and they're busy with work, or they are, you know, parents or guardians are actually essential personnel, or they're actually back in person, again, it's easier to have a team or high school student just stay at home. Whereas, you know, there's a lot of amazing providers that are all being supported by Allegheny County DHS right now to run these Learning Hub programs. And those young people, those young kids, those kindergarten to seven 6/7 grade kids, who need us most who are the most sort of vulnerable or at risk, there are still places they could go in person, even when school districts are shut down. And let me tell you, Audrey, the variability of schools closing, opening, closing opening, I mean, it's unlike anything we've ever seen before. So like a major props, and kudos to the staff, and with the girls clubs of Western Pennsylvania, as well as the 162 other Learning Hub providers across this area that just ran with it. And, you know, without them, I think that we would see things unfortunately, like referrals to to mental health providers, as well as child abuse, like some of those things I hypothesize would have been up. But because kids had a safe place to go, you know, some kids had a safe place to go. Now that doesn't come back. The fact that we know this region sometimes struggles with transportation, right, with school districts not providing transportation, some of the kids who needed us were at home. And I know as a region, we're going to continue to work to remedy some of those things. Shifting gears, though, to the high school students, we have had a lot of direct conversations with high school students about how missing out on the peer collaboration, social emotional support, just just like being at home alone all day. Like it's hard for them. It's hard for them. So these programs and these opportunities this summer, are really relevant and important to get kids who've been home alone in a place where they can collaborate and be together.
Well, I believe you have a slide that actually talks a little bit about this and the importance for successful opportunities. So you want to talk about that, or do you want to go back and talk about Nvidia and the pathways toolkit?
Well, I would say, you know, I actually took a few of my slides out because I just felt like you know, let's maybe try to focus on this, but I can speak to it Adria. And what I would say is people that slide was really trying to address that. We just cannot undervalue the social emotional needs of young people, not just because of the pandemic. But if we want to continue to democratize and diversify, young people who've been traditionally underrepresented in STEM careers, we can't minimize the need to support building soft skills and social emotional needs to really make them best prepared, because we really need to have this kind of whole child approach. Whenever we look to help young people consider stem as a post secondary pathway.
It's amazing. I mean, I I really applaud the fact that you know, you've taken the in person as much as possible and keeping people safe and keeping them connected, because the supports just haven't been there. The support haven't been there, particularly for people who are frontline workers. And I'm sure that's, that's a huge amount of your constituency.
It is in you know, boys and girls clubs in western Pennsylvania overall, about 70% of the 12,000 families that we serve through our programs, services and outreach are single parent households. And yes, so you know, a lot of the my colleague Eileen says it best when she talks about how VGC WPA is really a part of economic development in the region. because, frankly, a lot of our families and a lot of our parents are essential workers. They're out there working in frontline roles. And so, you know, by having the club and other places like the club's available, not just for care and safety, but for life changing enriching programs like these ones, it's really what we might call the Human Services space, a to Gen approach that by providing to gender approach by supporting the family, we can help create better outcomes for the children in the next generation.
That's good. That's great. So you want to talk about in Vivian, the AI pathways toolkit.
Yeah, yeah, thank you for that.
That's a big deal.
It's a really a big deal. And so we you know, in this in this program, we have been using and videos, hardware is like one of the key pieces of hardware that young people can explore and build AI literacy. And so we have some local folks here in Pittsburgh that are based here in Pittsburgh, that we were really asking for, like technical support, and I'm trying to see my my image, if I still have it here. Let me show you this image. So um, this is the Jetson and the Jetson is an Nvidia product, I will not do it fully justice. So we can make sure the technical folks in the room get a fact sheet about the general hardware in particular, if they're interested. This was so early on in the development, these two young ladies, for example, had to actually 3d print the chassis around the piece of hardware. So they got to explore how to design, how to 3d print how to then mold mold the piece of hardware inside of what they 3d printed. And so this is a this is an Nvidia product. And we basically were reaching out to them for technical support. And what we found out is they were doing amazing open source things with developing Jetson robot certification. And we were like, so Christine, our STEM director, and myself and a few of our other lead instructors, we were like, how do we like help staff, and out of school time environments using this hardware that are not like working in a company working in like a for profit space, utilizing this hardware? How do we like train them, how to help kids learn how to use them. And so we just started a conversation with them and started building a relationship. They've been so supportive, around product support, technical support, that we just got really excited about the possibilities of developing this toolkit, where we could take the curriculum that we've now built, and that has been advised and evaluated by our friends at Carnegie Mellon robotics Academy, and like, how can we take that and really spread it across the Boys and Girls Clubs network across this country. And so from there, it really led to this idea of this of this toolkit, right. So um, you know, there's kind of three phases when we think about the pathway of the toolkit that Nvidia is supporting a multi year project development around. And it is really to help students understand AI and its ethical implications. And we're gonna use Jetson pre built models, particularly focusing on teaching the kids in the literacy modules around object detection and image recognition. And then that's going to be about a 25 hour curriculum. From there, they're going to have sort of the intermediate part of the program, which is exploring the five big ideas of AI. And they're going to train the Jetson to operate a new model. Okay, that's going to be a little bit more hefty 120 hours. Wow. And last but not least, those advanced students that have been doing this for a little while, so at that point, they would have gone through like a whole school year of training, a three week Summer Intensive, and then an after school component. And they will actually get to the point where they will be AI developers and creators. And they will use Jetson and the jet bot to actually develop neural networks and Internet of Things, applications. And that'll be a 250 hour component where they could actually get their Jetson AI certification. So if it's really exciting, and it's a way to really just take the amazing resources, they have the proven and evaluated curriculum, we have combined it to just really start to expand the number of kids not only in this region, but across the country that we can impact.
Well, how do you get below it, you have staff tools and training. So training the trainer, I would imagine that's what you're in there. So what does that look like? And who are the folks that have this skill set? Because I feel like I need to go through the student training, right, I think but we all need to go through the student training. So I'm interested in the staff tools and training the trainer.
And so Nvidia is helping support Boys and Girls Clubs in hiring a robotics and AI program manager and their role is going to be providing train that train the trainer professional development, as well as technical support to the what we call them the out of school time space youth development professionals. So schools might call them teachers, right? They call them teachers. We call them the out of school time, space. youth development professionals. And so this program manager here in Pittsburgh is going to be focused on providing that training and technical support to the youth development professionals that are facilitating this program. Because one issue that we have, especially in the after school space, but honestly, even in the daytime school space, is a lack of prepared in trained people that know how to teach computer science complex thinking AI. And so again, by leveraging the tools and the training that Nvidia already has, and how we know how to convert that into a relevant, and I'm a practitioner, you know, style of training, we're going to join forces to make sure that the staff that facilitate these programs, feel feel prepared to do so. And so there's, you know, it's the kid program, but it's also the staff training, right there. So the goal is that this toolkit is going to be open source. And folks will be able to come back to continuous training to sort of level up their skill set and eventually also be able to get that Jetson certification.
So when will this start for the kids? And I would imagine these are kids who are part of your club, right? They're members of the girls and boys club, right.
So this summer, we are offering the artificial intelligence pathways Institute, I'm going to go back to this slide. Okay. offering this also in conjunction with another pa smart award that we just got, it was just announced. And we're going to combine all of these amazing partners in this ecosystem of AI API to serve seven sites locally, as well as then serve three sights, nationally. So right now, okay, we're working with clubs in Detroit, Minnesota, Arizona, California, Florida. And that is actually all happening this summer. So we're looking to serve this summer, I'm talking like in a few months, I 500 youth in this artificial intelligence Pathways Program, both locally and nationally. Then we'll we'll look to do by summer of 2022, is we have this curriculum in this toolkit to a place where it's ready to be published, we'll look into six additional sites, six additional clubs, where we want to target 5000 Youth across the country. And then eventually, by 2024, our goal is to hold a national conference a competition to deepen student engagement around artificial intelligence. And the ultimate student reach that we're looking to meet is 20,000 Youth across the country in the spring, What's
your goal for this summer for Western PA,
for Western Pennsylvania this summer, we are working with the Williston foundation and Claritin city. Great hopefully, and we're going to be offering artificial intelligence pathways Institute in seven sites, and one of them will also be hybrid. Okay. So there'll be a virtual option for you that are still uncomfortable being in person. So we're leveling up from doing this in two locations, to seven. So is a big expansion this summer, I know that we've been super excited to interview tons of teachers to do this. We've already hired probably 12 people. I'm so excited about the local talent that is stepping up to be a part of this three week camp this summer here in western pa
and so are you actively recruiting should we have your link out there, you're actively recruiting for students and teachers Still,
we we do not need any additional teachers. At this point. we're choosing the staff, however, we are actively recruiting youth. And if you ultimately go to our website, which I believe I have here, I
put it out and we put it out in the LinkedIn. Okay. Awesome.
And you know, like, how could people get involved? Get involved, they can be a mentor, they can host an intern next summer. Okay. You know, just reach out to us if you're looking forward to being more involved in this opportunity. We have around 200 high school students locally that we can serve here this summer. So let us never work with kids and you want the flyer to help get it out there so they can apply. It is an application process. Audrey, they have to apply. And the again, the one thing that's really cool about this is that all the youth do actually get a stipend as well as a Chromebook or laptop
to produce nice, Graham. That's really nice. You got you've got a lot of balls in the air. And this seems like an incredible project. And the last question I have and then we're going to wrap up is are you going to do any research to follow these The students?
Absolutely, yeah. So we do a lot of research that's part of the Boys and Girls Club model, right? what's called our National Youth outcomes initiative and why and we track post High School placement and graduation. We also track things like, does a student participate in a program in ninth or 10th grade and then matriculate into something higher. And let me just leave you with the story. That stories are really impactful when we featured page and the Nvidia announcement. You know, Paige joined us in ninth grade, as a part of the original artificial intelligence pathways Institute. And she did it because she could earn a wage from doing it, and she could get the laptop. So it sounded cool to her because of the incentives. And she said that her goal was to, you know, after high school, do cosmetology, and you know, like, she didn't think a four year college was for her like, that wasn't her pathway. And now I'm really excited about the fact that you know, she's a junior in high school, and is planning on applying to college to be a computer science major. And so this experience has really shown that it's changed what her perception was, she said that when she joined, she didn't think that robotics and ai ai and stem was for her, it wasn't for a girl like her, she said, and so this experience has really showed her, it is for you, and you have the chance to change the future by being a part of industry. And so, you know, we do track all of those outcomes, and the outcomes are looking good. And that's why we're so grateful that ppg, and Vidya and all of our partners are investing in expanding this opportunity for our kids.
Great. So if you want to get in touch with Lisa, she put her email up there. But we also have shared the website, she's easy to find. And she, she told us, this is what she needs. This is what she wants. This is what she's working on. So there's I think there's one last question to Susan, do students learn programming as they're learning AI? Or is there something they need to know beforehand,
there is no prerequisite to know any sort of coding or any sort of computer science before entering into the program, they can come in just with an open mind about being exposed to this. And by the time they do dabble in some very, like light blocks of coding around Python in the summer program. But when they move into the school year program, the advanced program, that's where they're going to really dive heavily in specifically for those of you that are techies in the room into Python, and then eventually, you know, the goal is that they will build a neural network in IoT applications.
Well, on that note, we are ending Friday, we're ending the week I can't thank you enough for joining us and all the energy that you bring to this. We have a lot of balls in the air. My hat's off to you to try to launch this is really needed. And thank you for being with us today. So absolutely. Jay Jonathan, what's up? what's what's up.
Got a great business as usual. On Monday, we're kicking off the High Tech High touch healthcare series with the Jewish health care foundation. We're featuring Dr. Ellen Bickford. She oversees the population health for UPMC really excited to get this series spun up. Lots of good conversations coming your way.
That's nice. Okay. Well, Lisa, you're getting a lot of things from people and appreciating your work. So reach out to Lisa. She's easy to find. And, you know, she's always helpful. So thanks, everyone. Have a great weekend. Stay safe, you guys.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai