The STEAM Squad is a group of teenagers that have met online through Twitter, Instagram, etc. They created this group to be a team, to cheer their teammates on, to support each other, and overall, they try to get other kids involved in science, technology, engineering, art, and math.
Many within the STEAM Squad were members of various types of teams like robotics teams, science trivia teams, etc. Many were also doing local outreach to bring more kids into STEAM activities and studies. Several of the members were already becoming friends with each other online. The first major sign that these girls were stronger together was seen after a tweet by Allie Weber. She retweeted something that was said by someone famous about two other famous friends where this person stated she loved “her squad”. In the retweet Allie said, “Nice squad but I like mine better”, where she listed several young, upcoming scientists, inventors, and makers, almost all of which are in the STEAM Squad today.
Not long after this tweet, Allie attended a tech space camp. On the drive home Allie and her family were in a bad car accident on dark, rainy roads, the back window was broken out among other damage. They were taken to the hospital to be checked out, and Allie was checked for a concussion, but she only had some cuts and bruises. She was also very concerned about the people that were in the other vehicle. Luckily no one was seriously injured. When Julie Sage saw the tweets about the accident she immediately reached out to Taylor Richardson and said they should do something for Allie, and Taylor instantly agreed. They talked about ideas of what they could do and settled on putting together a video message of well wishes from Allie’s friends that she listed online as her squad. Julie reached out to everyone, asked them to record a short get-well message for Allie, send it to Julie, and then she would put it all together in one video and send it to Allie. To coordinate this effort Julie pulled all the girls into a group chat on Twitter, along with the girls were two women who have already been supportive of them online, Tamara Robertson and Tracey Fanara. This group chat with Julie, Taylor, Jordan, Lauren, and Hannah became the STEAM Squad. When the video was ready Julie added Allie to the chat group, and everyone told Allie that if she ever needed any help or support that they are there for her. They are all there to support each other.
Over time more girls were added into the group chat. This initial start was very free flowing and decisions about solidifying as a group did not always come easy. This was when Allie, Jordan, Julie, and Taylor, who had already become friends outside of this endeavor, came together and agreed to take on the responsibility as officers of the group. All the girls had widely varying schedules and activities, but they agreed to having the officers. Julie asked her parents for help in designing a web page for the group, her mom with the code and her dad with artwork. Throughout the design process Julie would post different options for the web page in the group chat, the girls would talk it over and give suggestions. The four of them slowly came up with a web site where different members would be highlighted at different times, and where they all could share their stories with everyone.
