The Just Like You Program is a program to empower girls to aspire towards considering career choices where women are historically under-represented, as well as empower and inspire the exploration of their own passions for STEAM vocations. Through monthly engagement with women of diverse professions, the girls would explore various careers, while learning life lessons. During this exploration, the girls are able to harness their natural talents and cultivate new ones.  By receiving a tangible reminder of their chosen professions, it is a daily reminder for the girls to make good choices and work hard.

 

Women, particularly Black and minority women, remain underrepresented in our government, our boardrooms, and countless other careers, resulting in a loss of talent, experience, and perspectives. The obstacles that prevent women from achieving career equity begin early in life when young girls internalize societal messages and cultural expectations that women of their background are not represented or successful in certain careers.

These impressions can prevent young women from reaching their full potential and have a detrimental effect on their lives, community, and society. Judge McCord was inspired to create The Judge Tiffany B. McCord “Just Like You” Empowerment Program after encountering a Career Barbie Doll, manufactured by Mattel/Fisher-Price, that portrayed a judge who was Black. She realized anew, in a personal way, that children who have the opportunity to see representation of their own ethnic backgrounds in all types of careers could be influenced to expand their expectations and internalize the breadth of what is possible for their own lives.

 

Today, in cooperation with WMAC and Title I elementary schools in Montgomery, Alabama, the goal of the “Just Like You” program is to empower and encourage girls to reach their full potential by bringing in local career women who interactively discuss with school-aged girls how they pursued the path to success in their fields. After the presentation, each girl walks away with a career guide and a Barbie Doll of her very own that both represents that career and portrays the diverse ethnic background of the girl receiving it. When girls have the opportunity to see themselves reflected in real-life, confident, career women who look like them, it can have a profound, life-changing effect on their ability to imagine a successful future in their career of choice. Playing with the dolls afterward, at home and with friends, serves to reinforce, and remind the girls that they have the power to determine their own paths forward.

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