Nicole Messier is an engineer with a B.S. in aerospace and mechanical engineering from The George Washington University. Joselyn McDonald is a filmmaker and designer. The duo met at Parsons, where they were both pursuing MFAs in Design and Technology. They quickly discovered their shared love of wearable technology and creative circuits. They also discovered a mutual passion for solving a problem: the dearth of girls in technology.

“Our goal is to create an environment where girls feel welcome to explore technology creatively,” said Messier, who had only one female engineering professor at GW. “Our long term goal is that there are more women and girls in technology and it is not such a male dominated space.”

Together, they created blink blink, which designs creative circuit kits — that include craft materials as well as tools like batteries, clips, copper tape, conductive thread, and pressure-sensitive conductive sheets — allowing girls age 8 and up to learn about circuits while engineering creative projects.

Playing with the kits is less intimidating than learning to code. But as girls design light-up scarves, glowing greeting cards, and more, they learn to build circuits and get an introduction to some essential science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) basics.

The enterprise started as an academic project. Participating in the 4.0 Schools accelerator program helped blink blink to prototype the way it would work in practice. The team talked with parents and children, created tutorials, ran workshops, iterated, and refined the idea.

Messier said if it were up to her, the “design thinking” approach championed by 4.0 Schools would be applied to everything.

Next up for the blink blink team is graduation from Parsons, a new blink blink kit, and upgraded tutorials for budding female engineers.

blink blink began as a venture of 4.0 Schools, a not-for-profit education incubator working in New Orleans and New York City. With backing from organizations including the Walton Family Foundation, 4.0 Schools cultivates and supports entrepreneurs who are creating new schools and innovative approaches to learning that address problems in America's K-12 schools.