Annie Welcomes Thirty-Three Young STEAM Women From Australia

It was an honor to be asked to speak to and host thirty-three young women from Hornsby high school, one of Sydney's renowned, academically selective schools. They are all very bright and engaged young women who seek to be tomorrow's game changers. The group is visiting Seattle, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley as part of their STEAM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Art, and Math) tour of the U.S.

They drove over from Santa Clara University just to see Annieglass and asked me to share my design process and entrepreneur skills.

I asked each to tell me what they were curious about and I received the most fascinating answers......robotics, chemistry, baking, fashion, social media, the compendium of the world...- I am so glad that I asked!

Much to the chagrin of some of their chaperones, I urged them to go out and fail, fail and fail some more because that is the best way to learn innovation, by experimentation and risk-taking. Some looked alarmed and some grinned ear to ear. I guess they were not hearing that enough.

I explained of the four Annieglass scholarships we sponsor, we never award it to an A student, only B and C students, because they are forgotten but they are the risk takers. Often they are the ones taking the risks to start a business and wind up hiring the A students to work for them. A teacher thanked me profusely saying they were too afraid to take a chance of not getting an A to do what it takes to innovate. I pointed them to the upstairs mezzanine filled with twelve failures for every item in our catalog, past and present.

My daughter Ava told them a wonderful story of growing up thinking that everybody's mom had a warehouse and a business and what a surprise it was to learn that was not the case.

The girls completed a butterfly mural that my son Taylor did for them on stretched canvas. We plan to auction it off for earthquake relief for Mexico online and announce the winner at our Nov. 4th Open House. Save the Date!