Growing up in a STEM household, Dr. Mackie also wanted to make science accessible to his sons Myles Ahmad and Mason Amir. After learning about the school system’s inability to create on-hand experiments, he wanted to revive his son’s excitement into the world of STEM. Conducting engaging experiments every Saturday would even lead over 20 curious kids from his neighborhood to participate in each week’s activities.

The experiments proved to be a success and students in Myles’s classes became appalled at the knowledge he acquired. Dr. Mackie realized he was providing his children with resources that were not accessible for all students.

“Right then and there, my son realized he was being exposed to something his friends had not,” Dr. Mackie shared with AfroTech. “He believed in his heart that if his friends were exposed, they would be just as bright as him. The frightening part was he was attending a magnet elementary school [one of the top schools in the state]. So, if his friends at his magnet school were not being exposed to these things — what does that say for kids everywhere else?”

The epiphany birthed STEM NOLA — founded in 2013 — with $100,000 from the pockets of Dr. Mackie and his wife Tracy Mackie. The award-winning program provides the Black community with human and technological capital housed through project-based learning, events and virtual learning.

To date, the award-winning program has helped over 70,000 students — predominantly underserved and low-income people of color — across 2,150 schools in the U.S. and beyond revitalize their interest in STEM.

As AfroTech previously told you, the 2018 Pew Research Center reported 10 percent of the STEM industry is composed of Black professionals signaling a lack of diversity and equity prominent in the sector. If there are programs that show the Black community that STEM is accessible, it will provide access, opportunity and information into a field that was once foreign to them due to systemic failure.

“When people think about STEM, they think about all the equations, but if we can teach our children the basic understanding of nature and different forces and how they work, we can demystify STEM for them,” Dr. Mackie said.

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Tracy Mackie

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