You are listening to the DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, brought you weekly by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

You can find podcasts and videos of these lectures online at eChorner.standford.edu.

On today's episode, we have Debbie Sterling, the founder and CEO of Goldie Blocks, an award-winning children's multimedia company that creates toys, books, videos, animation, and merchandise that challenges gender stereotypes and empowers girls to build their confidence, their dreams, and ultimately their futures. She's been honored

many times for her impact as a leader in the movement toward getting girls interested in

science and technology. Without further ado, here's Debbie. Thank you. Thanks everybody. I'm Debbie. It's great to be here. And I'm going to start my talk with a little logo. We all know well. My story begins when I was in your shoes. I was a Stanford student. And for me, getting into Stanford was probably one of the biggest things that had ever happened to me. I grew up in a really small town in Rhode Island. I went to a pretty average public school. And when I found out I got into Stanford, they announced it on the loudspeaker, and everyone in the cafeteria got up and cheered. Like it was that big of a deal. And so as I was preparing

to go off to college, I remember one day my math teacher pulled me aside and asked me what I

planned on majoring in. And at the time, I was a high school senior, I had no idea. She so I think

that you should consider engineering. And I remember that moment.

She said that I've told this story a million times what is so funny because in my head,

I pictured an old man driving a train.

I had no idea what engineering was, but whatever picture I had in my head was the least

appealing, interesting thing to me at all. And, you know, I kind of thought

she was crazy. But sure enough, I got to Stanford. And my freshman year, I had no idea what I

wanted to study. And so I thought, why not try engineering? So I signed up for ME 101. I walked into

the room and almost just turned right out and walked

out the other way because I looked around and I saw barely any girls. And I thought, you know,

I'm not sure if this is really for me. But luckily, I stayed in the class and I'm really glad that I

did because it was the first time that I learned what engineering was. and we weren't fixing train engines in that class. It was an amazing class

because it was really an introduction to just the way the world works. We learned the simple machines.

We learned how to build stuff, how to invent, how to be problem solvers. It was incredibly

creative and inspiring to me to think that I could be an inventor and solve big problems in the world.

That was something I was really passionate about, and so I decided I'm going to study engineering.

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