Mastercard Team Members Share Career Pathways, Job Skills, and More with Teens in the Youth Exploring Science Program

On Saturday, April 6, local teens in the Science Center’s Youth Exploring Science (YES) Program met and heard from five special guests from Mastercard® at the Taylor Community Science Resource Center. During the morning event, the professionals from Mastercard participated in a panel discussion with the YES Teens to talk about job opportunities and career pathways, and afterward they got to know and network with the teens as part of a fun icebreaker activity.

The Mastercard employees included Usha Ramalingam, Director, Data Compliance Platforms; Lauren Stockhausen, Manager, Product Experience Design; Darrieal Price, Senior Accountant (and an alumna of the YES Program!); Jim Thomas, Principal Software Engineer; and Tatiana Murley, Senior Reliability Engineer.

In the panel discussion, moderated by YES Teen Abigail Torres, the guests from Mastercard answered questions from the teens, including “What skills have helped you the most in your career journey?” and “What advice can you give to someone my age about getting into your field?” Topics also covered what a typical workday looks like for the professionals, as well as examples of projects or discoveries that they found exciting in their work.

As part of the YES Program, local teens are exposed to STEM professionals and careers, highlighting the opportunities available after teens complete the four-year program.

Celebrating 25 years of transforming lives through STEM learning, since 1998 the YES Program has provided informal, hands-on STEM education and college and career readiness training to help these teens realize their potential as STEM learners, career professionals, and innovators of the future.

Following the panel, YES Teen Elias Scott facilitated an icebreaker activity between the Mastercard team members and the YES Teens, allowing the two groups to get to know each other better and giving the YES Teens opportunities to practice their networking skills.

In the activity, participants sat at tables and were provided a roll of toilet paper. Each person was instructed to take as many squares of paper as they wanted, then wait for further instruction. Once everyone had chosen their number of squares, they were tasked with providing that many facts about themselves.

Thank you to the team members from Mastercard for coming and sharing their stories and advice with our YES Teens!

Mastercard’s generous philanthropic support of the Science Center’s YES Program, STL for All membership program, and mission to inspire everyone to be curious and engaged in science helped us serve over half a million people with connections to STEM learning in 2023.