Inspiring Coach honoree helping to make STEM accessible

By RANDY CAPPS

Shannon Mann had a problem. Or, more specifically, her daughter did.

She needed a place where she could build and code robots alongside her peers, and so the Techno Tigresses were born.

For her work in starting that team, and it’s impact on young women in Johnston County, Mann is the recipient of the 2021 Johnston Now Honors Inspiring Coach Award.

“My children attended Neuse Charter School for a few years,” she said. “I could not accept this award without saying Angela Jenkins was an amazing teacher at Neuse Charter School. She’s now at Triple S (Smithfield-Selma), and she was the one who really encouraged me to do this. She started the robotics teams at Neuse Charter, and my children went to some of the information meetings, but my daughter was too young at the time. She said, “Aw, this is really something I want to do.’ So, we sort of kept thinking we’d do that.

“We started home schooling, and we started a home school team with some other homeschoolers. Angela was always there, saying ‘You guys can do this’ and ‘Here’s what you need to know.’ Then, it kind of branched off from that. My daughter was the only girl on an allboy team. And they were wonderful, but boys do what boys do. They love to code and they love to build. My daughter also had an interest in coding and building, but she took a back seat to do more of the marketing. And it dawned on me that there were maybe other girls out there in the same situation.”

The Tigresses were a middle school, all-girls team, that offered Sloan and others like her the chance to build and code robots for FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics competitions. As it turns out, the team gave its members even more.

“I’m very fortunate my Air Force career has taken me all over the world,” she said. “I’ve met some amazing people in many different career fields. The defense department needs people in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). We need all people in STEM, girls, minorities, young men — all people. That was always in the back of my head.

“For me, it was not only about the opportunity to watch them build robots and compete. It was the opportunity to go meet the dog handlers at the Raleigh Police Department and talk about how they use science and technology in training these dogs.”

There were also field trips to a NASCAR team facility, Caterpillar and Campbell’s School of Engineering, among other places.

“What I loved about our first season is that everyone was opening their doors,” she said. “Come take a tour, we’ll show you what we do. ... What was fun for me is after every field trip we took, I had four or five little girls saying, ‘Oh my gosh. I want to do that.’ That to me is what it was all about. The competition was just the icing on the cake.”

You don’t have to be an expert coder to participate, either.

“What I love about FIRST Robotics is that there’s a place on that team for every kind of skill,” she said. “Soft skills are so important. Public speaking, writing, investor relations, finance, marketing. I mean, if I had an art student on the high school team right now, I could do so much with that kid. I had one girl, she wasn’t a coder or a builder, but if you put her in front of an audience, her personality lit up a room. Ask Clayton Rotary.”

Mann has personal experience with that sort of thing, too.

“When you think of robotics or hear that word, you might think, ‘Aw, that’s a bunch of nerds on that team,’” she said. “It’s a bunch of Sheldon Coopers. My current job is marketing manager for the Department of the Air Force’s MIT Artificial Intelligence Accelerator. I work with airmen, researchers and staff at MIT developing artificial intelligence. So, I’m definitely the Penny on that team. In fact, that’s my ringtone for my boss. But, what I love about FIRST is that it takes a village. It takes a city. So, don’t discount it because you think your kid isn’t a coder or an engineer. There’s so many opportunities to watch them grow.”

The Tigresses moved on to high school recently, and Mann went with them, mentoring a communitybased team housed at Smithfield-Selma.

“The Tigresses had a wonderful following,” she said. “In fact, a lot of our sponsors that supported our middle school team jumped on board to support the high school team.”

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