By any metric, Kara Branch has had an extremely successful career, quickly rising to the top of her profession. But it hasn’t been easy. As a young Black female with little resources and a dream of a STEM-based career, she had to forge her own way, continually overcoming challenges, and reinventing and pushing herself at every stage of her journey.
As a self-proclaimed nerd, Branch always had the smarts and ambition—a combination that has served her well. She became the first person in her family to go to college, receiving a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and, later, an MBA from Prairie View A&M University in Texas, one of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In the “real world,” Branch hit the ground running as a process engineer with outsized responsibilities for a small engineering and construction firm, then moved onto a series of even more impressive jobs—lead manufacturing engineer, project manager (leading NASA-awarded contracts) and eventually a training manger at Intel.
Throughout her career, however, Branch never lost sight of her true passion: helping others. Given her background, it was especially important to be a positive role model to her own daughters—as well as other Black girls—and provide them the resources to succeed. To this end, she started Black Girls Do Engineer (BGDE) Corp., a nonprofit aimed at doing just what it’s name implies. The results have been phenomenal. Since launching in 2019, BGDE has impacted 3,000 girls and college students nationally, while awarding $44,000 in scholarships to help members with college expenses.
Manufacturing Engineering (ME) Editor-in-Chief Steve Plumb recently had the pleasure of speaking with Branch about her life experiences and vision for the future, especially when it comes to BGDE. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.
ME: What was your childhood like?
Branch: My family is from Louisiana, then moved to Port Arthur, which is a border town in southeast Texas and known for having one of the world’s largest refineries—Motiva. My whole family has worked in manufacturing, so I knew what that looked like. I’m the youngest of three kids, raised by a single mom. In 6th grade, we moved to Austin when she got a job with Dell. She worked around the clock to raise me, but was always at my basketball games and dance engagements cheering me on. What I learned from my family was how to work hard, fall in love and survive in the world. Living paycheck to paycheck was the norm, and “keeping your bills on” was the monthly goal. In my community, the emphasis was placed on sports as the way out. There wasn’t a big push for education. Although my school had textbooks, they were few in number and mostly older editions.
ME: When did you first show an aptitude in school.
Branch: It started in kindergarten. This is when I learned that my brain was different. I could answer all the questions in class, and then the awards started to come, along with my first pair of “Steve Urkel” glasses. The awards didn’t stop, but once middle school came around, my attention turned toward fitting in, which was compounded by moving from a small town to Austin. If you were a straight “A” student as I was, you were written off as a nerd. Being popular and cute became the focus. Although I still loved learning and my grades were still A’s, I learned to have “swag” and to hide my smartness.
In high school, something inside me reemerged. College was something I always dreamed of, but I didn’t know how to get there. I had no firsthand examples to follow. I imagined a world where you didn’t have to worry about your lights or gas getting turned off ... I would sneak off to Westlake, an affluent community in Austin, to see what a comfortable living looked like.
I give a lot of credit to one of my high school teachers, an older woman who taught chemistry and had a reputation of being tough. But the first time we started working on balancing equations, I immediately got it and was encouraged. The same thing happened in my biology class. As a high achiever, I had the option to take an AVID college prep class, and earned five (financial) vouchers to apply to state colleges in Texas. I chose Prairie View partly because it was an HBCU.
ME: Did you have any career aspirations?
Branch: As a child, I wanted to be either an attorney or a singer. But when I saw attorneys on TV lie, I knew I couldn’t do that. When I started college, I wanted to major in dance—I had made the all-city dance team and dreamed of traveling the world as a backup dancer for Usher. My college advisor thought different, telling me “no, let’s find a degree in something you can make a career out of.” After passing courses in thermodynamics and energy balances, when other students were dropping out of the program, I decided to become a chemical engineer. But I still felt like the underdog. Even though I went to an HBCU, most of the other minority students had parents who were engineers. They were ready to take those courses, while I was still figuring everything out. Then in my senior design class, I not only designed a reactor—I learned everything about it—and I started tutoring other students and helping them gets A’s, too. So when I started going to career fairs, talking to recruiters and seeing their interest, I could start to see my future.
ME: With so much interest among major companies, why did you start at a small engineering firm?
Branch: One of my professors said it would be the best place to learn—and it was. It was a family-owned company that wanted to develop a succession plan for young engineers, so I was leading projects right out of college. It was a great experience; we were trained very well by people with 50-plus years in the field. I was in boardroom meetings with investors, and had to know everything about a project and the vessels we designed. But I still felt like an underdog. I could do all the calculations, but I had to learn how to be confident and communicate effectively. And I had to learn that business was business, rather than take everything so personally.
ME: Did you have role models or mentors? Did you interact with other people with similar backgrounds?
Branch: No, in most cases I was the only Black woman in the room. So, to fit in, I thought I had to change everything about me, like how I dressed. I tried to adapt to the environment, which started to become an issue for me.
ME: How did you handle it?
Branch: Not very well at first; I felt that I always had to prove myself 10 times more. Sometimes I felt that people didn’t think I was smart enough. It seemed like I spent the first two years of my career crying a lot, and complaining at home to my spouse. I was confused and doubted myself. Eventually I found my voice and began believing in myself again—like I could accomplish anything in the world.
ME: What changed and how did you juggle everything?
Branch: I realized I belonged and embraced being a Black woman in my industry. I switched jobs, took on more responsibilities and went back to school. It was very hectic for sure, but also rewarding. At the same time, I started seeing more Black women rising through the ranks in various departments behind me.
ME: You launched BGDE just a few years into your career. How did that come about?
Branch: To build a successful career as a chemical engineer, I had to construct my own roadmap from scratch. For much of my academic and career journey, I’ve been the only woman of color in most rooms. This troubled me. Why weren’t there more Black girls and young women entering STEM? Was it a lack of resources, a lack of mentorship or a lack of representation? I had experienced all three.
Then, in 2019, my oldest daughter told me she wanted to be a software engineer. In that moment, I realized that witnessing my life and career, and being my child had given her the necessary resources, mentorship and representation to succeed—and I knew I needed to find a way to provide that for more girls. I had been a Girl Scouts troop leader and was always involved with helping children coming into STEM, but I remember my daughter being the only Black girl in these programs. I needed to reach other girls who looked like me and who came from where I came from. It wasn’t enough to achieve my own dreams. I needed to pay it forward.
I created Black Girls Do Engineer in 2019, with the mission to educate, elevate and empower girls (6-21) by offering exposure and representation to help them achieve their aspirations. Our vision is to increase the presence of Black-American girls and young women by providing career-based experience from skilled STEM professionals.
ME: What was the initial goal?
Branch: It started as a part-time operation with the help of one of my college friends and a co-worker. I had to learn how to set up a nonprofit, find a place to meet, etc. But as soon as I announced it and put the logo on Facebook, people starting liking it like crazy. We started with 18 girls, hosting monthly Saturday meetings and pop-up engineering camps. Over time, I built relationships with other women in Houston who had this type of experience, as well as local businesses that provided equipment and helped support us. Sometimes we would bring in computers for the girls to build. In addition to providing them the tools and resources, we created a safe place to share experiences, build self-confidence and change their mindsets. Most of the girls have similar stories to mine, so I’m really able to connect with them.
ME: The program took off fast, with some early success stories. You must be proud.
Branch: It’s truly amazing and brings me so much joy. The positive impact is incalculable: For each girl BGDE helps along her academic and career path, that girl will go out into the world and help others. Thanks to our BGDE-licensed curriculum that provides a detailed roadmap to success, we have a 100% college success and job placement rate. In our first year, we won a NASA Wear STEM Challenge with a headgear prototype for a future mission to Mars, beating out 70-plus teams around the nation. The girls also have written white papers for the Department of Energy, and even calculated their own carbon footprints and ways to reduce them—we do a lot of engineering around here! More recently, Houston’s mayor honored us with our own “Black Girls Do Engineer Day,” where we gave out 11 awards. (The second annual event will be held June 21.) And we just wrapped up a STEM Pathway symposium to identify potential careers based on their hobbies and personality, so every girl in BGDE right now can tell you exactly what she wants to be and how she’s going to get there. That’s empowering.
ME: What’s next for you and BGDE?
Branch: There’s always something new, which keeps it exciting for the girls and helps grow the business. We also plan to open our own building—a STEM center/makers’ space—something for our girls in the community. We need room to grow to meet demand. I’d like to expand the program from 60 girls per year today to 200.
My main goal in the next three years is to take the program nationally—hosting events in as many major U.S. cities as possible—and I already have an international initiative I’m doing with girls in Ghana. Our goal is to impact 2 million girls worldwide by about 2050.
It’s a battle every day, but I’m learning that my program is definitely going to change the way this industry looks. The number for Black women in this space is under 3%; we’re going to change that because the program is going to push a lot of girls toward engineering and manufacturing.
The demand is high for what we do, so many people have been searching for something like this. This is going to break generational curses and provide generational wealth for Black children. I’m a fighter and I always have pushed through and learned ... learned more and kept on learning. Now I’m able to share my experiences and help others with their journeys.
ME: You’re really making a difference in a lot of lives. Do you feel you’re finally able to be your true self, too? Career, family and maybe even some dancing?
Branch: Ha. Yes, I manage to sneak it in ... a little ballet turn in the house. And I’m living my fashion dreams and have my own STEM kit (STEMXposed) line. It’s a full life, and I’m true to myself. I love it!
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