ITWomen Invited to Speak to Nova High School’s "Women of Tomorrow”

Nova High School’s Women of Tomorrow (WOT) hosts a series of career days and recently invited ITWomen and Florida Power & Light Company to participate in the Engineering and Computer Sciences session. The session, hosted at Nova High School in Davie, Florida, was facilitated by Juliet Roulhac, Esq. of FPL External Affairs.  Andrea Pelt-Thornton, IT Business Solutions Group Manager of FPL and Arlene Willis, Role Model Speakers Coordinator of ITWomen, were special guest role models providing career path advice to at least 26 girls from grades 9 to 12. Andrea provided growth insights from her time at Miami Edison High School to her college years at University of Florida. Arlene shared her experiences and challenges as an immigrant from a Caribbean high school going to New Jersey Institute of Technology, a northeastern US college.  Both guests also described how they decided on their college majors; Andrea studied Computer Science and Arlene studied Engineering.

Nova High School Career Counselor and WOT Coordinator Jenna Gentile and Dr. Carolyn Stewart, Broward County Public Schools District Community Relations Coordinator and WOT Co-Mentor were also on hand to ensure the success of the session.  The Co-Mentors meet each month with high school girls whose professional interests include forensics, medical IT, retail pharmacy, culinary arts and computer science.

Women of Tomorrow relies on the commitment and participation of highly accomplished professional women to meet with small groups of at-risk girls in public high schools once a month to discuss ways to overcome obstacles and to provide skills for success.

From left to right: Juliet Roulhac (NextEra/FPL), Arlene Willis (ITWomen), Jenna Gentile (Nova High School) and Andrea Pelt-Thornton (NextEra/FPL).