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MassRobotics: Meet Tech Top 50 ‘Social Responsibility Impact’ Honoree

The MassTLC Tech Top 50 celebrates tech companies and leaders across the region who have made a significant impact in the community during the past 12 month. This year, we are excited to recognize winners across 11 categories: Business Accomplishment, Environmental Impact, Leadership, Mosaic (for DEI leadership), Social Responsibility Impact, and the Technology of the Year categories: Advanced Manufacturing, Clean Tech, Consumer Tech, Cybersecurity, Healthcare Tech, and Robotics.

Forty-nine honorees were chosen across these categories, with the final recognition, the Commonwealth Award, given to industry pioneer and co-creator of the spreadsheet, Dan Bricklin.  View the full list of Tech Top 50 winners, here.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing more about each of the recipients to spotlight their accomplishments and their impact on customers, partners, employees, and the broader community.

Today, meet MassRobotics, one of this year’s honorees for Social Responsibility Impact.

MassRobotics helps create and scale the next generation of successful robotics and automation companies by providing entrepreneurs and innovative robotics/automation startups with the space and resources they need to develop, prototype, test, and commercialize their products and solutions.


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What program(s) have you created/supported in the past year (since May 2021) that have made a meaningful impact toward social responsibility?

Our STEM program continues to expand and include students from our diverse surrounding community.  In 2020 we piloted our girls Jumpstart Fellowship program with 8 girls and updated curriculum and expanded to 17 girls in 2021.  (Applications now open for 2022)  We continue to offer our drone academy to students at Boston Boys and Girls Club and have received funding to secure a dedicated STEM Lab space and able to host class field trips throughout the year.  We recently added a STEM & Robotics field trip day at our annual robot block party to showcase robotic technology and potential career paths for students to consider.  Several schools in the community participated and one teacher even walked over a mile with 2 of her middle school classes to participate.

What measurable success has this program(s) achieved (this can be qualitative and/or quantitative?

We believe in a long-term commitment to the community and building a diverse pipeline of future roboticists, engineers, and scientists.  Several students who have completed our first 2 Jumpstart cohorts have gone on to engineering schools at MIT, UMass and WPI – some have received scholarships.  Many students are interested in returning this summer to mentor our new cohort.  While it’s difficult to make a huge impact in numbers overnight, little by little we are building a network of diverse young women, who will rise together with confidence and become our next generation of leaders.

Comments received from students in our cohorts include:

  • “I never really had a ‘tech experience’ before the program.”
  • “I found my passion in engineering and coding, my future has never felt so much clearer.”
  • “The experience helped me realize that I really do like tech and engineering and think it will be something I pursue as I think about my future, what I want to study, and my career.”
  • “Entering the professional world is not easy, but this program has worked with us to make this path a lot easier, by creating a safe space where we could share with each other our struggles, accomplishments, works we’re proud of, and works that we wished we did differently.”
  • “It is important for fellowships like this to exist because it created a space for women of color to bond over their knowledge of STEM. Together, this cohort got over their shyness and worked as one unit to successfully complete a rigorous program.”

What does it mean to be recognized with the other Tech Top 50 honorees?

It’s both humbling and rewarding to be recognized along with others who are doing so much to have a meaningful impact in our community.  One of the pillars of our mission is “inspiring the next generation”.  We believe in leading by example and our small diverse staff of 10 includes 5 women and 5 men, speaking not only English, but Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and Dari.  It’s great to see how much impact we can have and hope our community enthusiasm is contagious.

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Congratulations to MassRobotics

 

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