I was a Summer 2024 mentor this year. This is a fantastic way to get involved in developing young women interested in STEM fields. I truly enjoyed my weekly meetings with my mentee, and it was inspiring to see the passion she had for her project. I plan to continue mentoring with Magic! Definitely recommend!
I've been involved with MAGIC (More Active Girls in Computing) for over five years and every year it just keeps getting more inspiring to watch the young women (middle and high school) who participate in this program. It gives me Hope for a better future seeing these young women so passionate about areas of STEM often combined with other aspects of their life. Right next to the mentees are the incredible mentors -- women who have super busy lives (family, career, etc.) who VOLUNTEER their time to mentor young women interested in STEM. Many of the mentees go on to become mentors themselves --- keeping the cycle alive. I've seen it first-hand being part of MAGIC for all these years and totally grateful for being part of their journey.
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Another session has come to a close and I continue to be amazed at all the mentees and mentors involved in this program. The dedication and commitment from the mentors renew my hope in people. And the creativity and minds of the young mentees renew my hope in the future generation.
MAGIC is a dream come true! Our school has partnered with MAGIC for a decade, and I couldn't speak more highly about the incredible value that they provide to our students. It's also a pleasure working with the very well organized MAGIC staff. We feel extremely fortunate to be able to offer this special opportunity to our students.
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I am a computer science teacher at an independent school for girls, and I've worked with this MAGIC-al organization for many years now. We are so fortunate to partner with them to offer mentoring and CS education for our especially motivated middle school students. Ira, Ian, and Cristal have been outstanding collaborators. This is clearly a labor of love for them! If you are a woman in CS who is passionate about encouraging girls to pursue CS as a career, I can assure you that you can make a significant impact as a MAGIC mentor.
I am Bushra, the Director of Data Science at Doximity, and I volunteered as a mentor with GetMagic. The org matched me with a mentee, a 7th grader, and we worked together for 5 months. We started with simple concepts and more of a lecture style, but by mid-point, she was quite independent, and we moved to her leading the sessions and asking questions. It was a rewarding experience.
I appreciate the support of the org staff throughout. They had well-defined processes, documents, checkpoints, and check-ins to ensure both the mentor and the mentee had a great mentoring and learning experience respectively.
I will certainly volunteer with GetMagic again and will encourage my peers as well.
A big challenge faced by women in tech is finding relatable role models. Getmagic addresses this by pairing middle/high school girls with women professionals in STEM and allowing 1:1 project based mentorship. I am a software professional with over 30 years in tech and found my first year mentoring with Getmagic extremely satisfying. I was fortunate to work with two 9th graders. Over a period of 10 weeks, we worked 1:1 building an Andriod App with one and a simple website with another. While working on the tech projects of their choosing, the mentees also pick up other skills - how to problem solve, how to do research, how to give presentations - all valuable skills that would be required in their professional lives. GetMagic is a win-win for both mentees and mentors and I wish I had found it sooner.
MAGIC has provided incredible mentorship for my high school students. Through MAGIC's rigorous matching process, the students were provided with role models and mentors in all different fields of STEM. The projects they produced ranged from phsychology research experiments to website and app development to mechanical engineering and 3-D printing. Truly an outstanding program!
MAGIC is an amazing organization that I'm honored to have partnered with! Each staff member is incredibly thoughtful and student driven. They go above and beyond to ensure that all of the mentees have a wonderful experience and are matched with just the right mentor. The mentees' projects and presentations were inspiring, and I'm looking forward to continuing our partnership next season!
My daughter wasn't into computer programming at all until last year. Then she decided to try out comp science as one of the subjects in this academic year, when we found out about MAGIC through one of my colleagues. Even though we started a bit late, it has made a world of difference! She is very interested in technology now, in fact she comes up with new ideas almost every day :-) MAGIC has indeed done magic ! Thank you very much to the mentors, organizers and volunteers for all the positive experience and influence that your program has been providing. I had the opportunity to attend the presentations at Google by some of the girls - its a truly amazing experience to see all the creativity flowing.
It was an exciting experience to see the MAGIC in my daughter's growth and her sense of empowerment. These experiences served as a foundation into Computer Science and into a world of possibilities. The Magic program brought together the ability to solve complex problems using a programmatic approach.
Namitha Benjamin, my daughter's mentor, is an extremely intelligent woman that was her coach and friend. Namitha is patient, caring, and very dedicated to helping students evolve in their full potential.
I highly recommend Magic, and Namitha, to new students that are interested in learning about computer science. There is no challenge this wonderful program can't help solve for motivated students.
Congratulations on a job very well done to all mentees and mentors!
Presentations are unbelievably good it is amazing how much progress they made in an year. It is good to see creativity & innovation in the projects these girls have exhibited in their projects with the help of mentors.
Thankyou so much for Ira & co for providing such an amazing experience for my daughter MAGIC did magic on my daughter and turned her thought process. She was a bit shy and hesitatnt about the program in the beginning but with Bobbys amazing mentoring she turned herself into completely a different girl.
She had a very good time working with Bobby through out the year. Bobby is very patient, brilliant, encouraging and hardworking mentor we can't ask anything more from her. We hope to have Bobby as her mentor next year as well. Thankyou Bobby for putting yourself into the program to help our daughter. We all really appreciate it.
Thankyou for Aparna, Deepa and all for coordinating today's presentations they were pretty smooth and we all had a really good time in presentations, dinner and chatting with you all. We came to know more and get connected with mentors and other like minded parents. Hope to keep in touch with you all and see you again next year.
I am the Computer Science department chair and MAGIC coordinator for my school, the Girls' Middle School in Palo Alto, CA. At this point, MAGIC has matched nearly 50 young women from my school with female mentors who share their STEM interests. What a gift to those girls! The value of the 1-to-1 mentorships cannot be overstated. Though our school already has a strong math, science, and technology focus, this program has given an extra boost to girls who have a hunger to 'go deeper' and who crave the specialized knowledge that a professional in the field has to offer. Year after year, I see our MAGIC students thrive on the relationships they build through the program and develop technical talents beyond what could usually be expected from a middle schooler. The individualized direct support of programs like MAGIC is the best way overcome the sense of exclusion from the STEM fields that so many women feel. Hooray to the uniformly excellent MAGIC volunteers (and MAGIC's dedicated founder, Ira Pramanick) for addressing a critical need and helping to cultivate our next generation of technical leaders.