Our Story

August 2014

Haried and Engele began a social entrepreneurship class led by Noah Isserman and Ryan Singh at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Little did they know, this would mark the beginning of a journey that would impact their lives, as well as the lives of thousands of young girls across the country.

September 2014

Motivated by the question “What bothers you?”, Engele, immediately wanted to inspire her female peers on campus. Haried quickly drew from her past research about the lack of women in C-suite positions. Their conversation moved to,

“Why is that?” and “What can we do to change these issues?”  

OCTOBER 2014

Engele and Haried created MakerGirl -- a mission driven organization about more than just 3D printing. MakerGirl inspires girls to be active in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and encourages them to continue to say “Yes!” to future challenges through 3D printing workshops.

NOVEMBER 2014

The first MakerGirl session happened in November of 2014 with seven girls from the Champaign-Urbana community. Haried and Engele began building a team of talented students from across campus to lead the workshops and grow the organization.

Winter & Spring 2015

MakerGirl continues to run successful sessions throughout the school year. Led by university students, they partner with professors and student organizations on campus to bring STEM-related guest speakers and activities into their 3D printing workshops.

SUMMER 2015

MakerGirl is accepted into the first cohort of the prestigious iVenture Accelerator, a summer program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign designed to help start-ups further their ventures.

Spring 2016

MakerGirl begins raising money and planning for their first #MakerGirlGoesMobile trip. They successfully raised over $32,000 through a Kickstarter campaign to bring their programming on the road for the summer, with a focus on rural and underserved communities.

SUMMER 2016

MakerGirl successfully completes their first #MakerGirlGoesMobile road trip. They travel over 10,000 miles to 17 different states across the country and bring their 3D printing programming to 1,007 girls.

Spring 2017

MakerGirl fundraises and plans for their second #MakerGirlGoesMobile road trip. They successfully raise over $15,000 through a second Kickstarter campaign.

SUMMER 2017

MakerGirl successfully completes their second #MakerGirlGoesMobile road trip. They travel over 2,500 miles and bring their 3D printing programming to 521 girls across the Midwest.

Spring 2018

MakerGirl expands to Northwestern University and begins to offer programming in Evanston.

FALL 2018

MakerGirl hires their first full-time CEO, Stephanie Hein and pilots their program with the Society of Women Engineers at Harvard.

SPRING 2019

MakerGirl begins expansion plans for University of Michigan, University of Texas at Austin, Milwaukee School of Engineering.