As a kid growing up on Long Island, New York, Yamilée Toussaint always looked forward to ‘Take Your Daughter to Work’ Day. Her father was a mechanical engineer who made electrical parts, and Toussaint loved watching him work. “I liked how my father was the person who can fix things – if something was broken, he could find a creative solution to fix it – and how much pride he took in being that person,” says Toussaint.
The ability to fix things and solve problems was something that Toussaint shared with her father, and she sought it out in her school work. It was no surprise to her parents that she excelled at both maths and physics, but when she was accepted by MIT – a university with a 4.8% acceptance rate – to study mechanical engineering, her parents were stunned. “I think them seeing me get in was almost shocking, because it’s not like they had planted that idea in my mind,” says Toussaint.
Toussaint was also pushing against her own doubts. As one of very few Black women in her maths and physics classes in school in the early 2000s, she found herself even more of a minority at MIT where, even as recently as 2020, only 6% of undergraduates were Black. “It led to some thoughts that questioned my ability to make it,” she says.
But Toussaint knew her skills and abilities, and knew that she could keep up with the very best of her peers.
That growth mindset is very strong in me – I didn’t necessarily need people to pick me up.
With strong ambition and an instinct for leadership, Toussaint credits her proactive mindset to her father, who in 2003 founded a non-profit in New York called Haitians Orphans Wish, which organises fundraising activities to support Haiti’s orphaned and disadvantaged youth. “I always saw myself leading something, creating something,” Toussaint says. “I didn’t know what it would be, but I knew that I had it in me to be able to do what I saw my father do.”
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When she graduated from MIT in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science (mechanical engineering) degree, Toussaint chose a very different path from many of her fellow students. Instead of going straight into industry, Toussaint decided that she wanted to teach. “I knew coming out of MIT that I wanted to do work in social impact,” she says. “That’s what led me to education; not so much a love for teaching, but more so a desire to do something social-impact related.”
She joined Teach For America, a New York-based non-profit that selects and recruits university graduates from top universities to serve as teachers at schools across the United States, and got her master’s degree in teaching at Pace University, New York.
Why it matters
Even coming from the incredibly rigorous academic environment of MIT, Toussaint says being a teacher at Teach for America was a steep learning curve. One of the biggest challenges was simply getting her students to believe that they could succeed in maths, or that maths even mattered to begin with, she says. Many students had fallen far behind in maths; those who hadn’t were struggling to see subject as relevant to their lives. Toussaint put an enormous effort into motivating her class to care about maths.
It got her thinking about how to overcome students’ resistance to not just maths, but to STEM subjects as a whole.
That seems to be the key to unlock potential: first, I have to get you to believe that you can do it, and then I can show you how to do it.
The answer came from another of Toussaint’s passions: dance. From a young age, Toussaint has loved dancing – especially tap and modern styles – and has spent up to six evenings a week at dance classes. “Dance has always been a source of encouragement and joy and community,” she says. “There’s got to be some relationship between me dancing all of these years and that ability to persevere and stay positive.”
That spark ignited Toussaint’s purpose, and she found a way to bring her love of dance, her passion for maths, her desire for social impact and her leadership skills together in one ground-breaking idea: to use dance to break down the barriers to participation in and enjoyment of STEM for women of colour.
In 2012, Toussaint launched STEM From Dance; a non-profit organisation that provides project-based, hands-on experiences that incorporate STEM into a dance performance. Based in New York with a small team of ten members, the organisation is funded by donations, grants, and fees for its services.
Students participating in STEM From Dance can create costumes with built-in lighting, for example, which teaches them about electrical engineering. Or, they can write a computer program that projects animations onto dancers as they perform – an activity that gives them the opportunity to learn and practice their coding skills. “We give them the authority to create in both dance and STEM, and to realise in real time that they can be an engineer or a programmer or a scientist, because they’re [already] doing it,” says Toussaint.
The programmes are culturally sensitive and take place in whichever environment gives the young women a sense of safety. The team will often go to schools, particularly those in under-privileged areas, says Toussaint, but adds that they also get approached by a lot of parents across the United States through word of mouth.
“The most common trajectory that we hear about is the girl who came to us because her mum made her sign up, or that she came because she loves dance,” says Toussaint. “Over time, they realise that they have this knack, this interest in STEM, and they realise that STEM is not so bad after all.”
This unique approach to STEM education has already proven successful, with many of the STEM From Dance participants going on to pursue careers in STEM. STEM From Dance has the goal of reaching one million girls across the United States in the next 10 years, and expanding into other countries in need.
For Toussaint, testimonials from girls who have completed the programme have been a huge motivator for her to keep going.
Something I created allowed a girl to feel better about themself, to feel more confident and to feel like they’re stepping more fully in their power – those stories never get old.
“The idea that they are taking a path that otherwise they wouldn’t be taking, whenever I hear it, it makes me grateful that I’ve had the chance to play this role in these girls’ lives.”
Story by Bianca Nogrady