Ellie Slawek '20 Featured on #CreateGood 2018 Panel as Kode with Klossy Scholar

Junior Ellie Slawek was featured this week at the #CreateGood event in New York City for her work with the Mount’s Firebirds robotics team, and as a Kode With Klossy scholar.

#CreateGood was hosted October 15-19 by digital media company Brit + Co., which encourages creativity and strives to empower women through inspirational content and online classes. The company’s tenets are “educate, inspire, inform, entertain.” Each year, the company holds the week-long #CreateGood event in New York. This year’s session showcased a different theme each day. One theme was FUTURE, and featured guests Mindy Grossman (President and CEO of WW), comedian and writer Ruby Karp, recording artist Maddie Pope, youth health activist Haile Thomas, and Alexandra Lehman (co-founder and executive director of Coalition Z). Ellie appeared on this day, on a panel with two fellow Kode With Klossy scholars. Brit Morin, founder and CEO of Brit + Co., moderated the panel. In partnership with BUILD, a live interview series with guests in entertainment, business, tech, fashion, and more, the panel was held at BUILD Studios. Ellie’s panel was livestreamed on Brit + Co.’s website and Facebook; currently, the livestream has nearly 26,000 views.

Watch the panel here >> 

Last summer, Ellie was selected from a group of nationwide applicants as a Kode With Klossy scholar. Kode With Klossy is an organization started by model Karlie Kloss that aims to empower girls to learn code and become leaders in tech. Each year, they host a two-week summer camp in New York for girls ages 13-18. Slawek was invited to attend the camp with other Kode With Klossy scholars. During camp, Slawek created a website called She Inspires, which allows visitors to choose their current mood, and then uses an algorithm to provide an inspirational playlist and quotes related to the chosen mood. She used her coding skills to construct the site.

A production team visited Mount Saint Joseph Academy in September to film footage for a feature on Slawek. On camera, Slawek, demonstrated her skills in the robotics lab, including driving a robot, and spoke about why working in robotics is important to her.

Slawek has been involved with the Mount’s robotics team, the Firebirds, throughout her time at the Mount. She says during competition season, she spends up to 30 hours per week in the Academy’s robotics lab. Each season, she and her teammates construct a 120-pound functioning robot from scratch. In the off-season, Slawek and her teammates often attend educational events and live demonstrations geared toward young girls, and mentor several local grade-school robotics teams.