Capital One presented the second annual Innovate(her) [Inno-va-tor] conference in partnership with The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on Friday, Feb. 22, 2019.

Capital One associates, UTD students and professionals from the community served as mentors to help 250 middle school girls from Dallas, Richardson, Fort Worth and Grand Prairie learn personal branding, entrepreneurship, design thinking, finance basics, coding and technology through the following activities:

• Comet Cents An interactive game that challenged students to reimagine budgeting in a practical way.
• Pitch Perfect: Students learned the art of persuasion by presenting a pitch to peers.
• Design Thinking: Working in pairs, students designed a better morning routine for their partners using customer empathy to create a problem statement, solve the problem based on human needs and refined their solution through feedback and improved revisions.
• Coders: Students created their own mobile app called “Mole Masher” that rids a field of pesky moles that kept popping up.

“Capital One is proud to widen the educational opportunities for girls in STEAM and help them gain the skills of tomorrow, today so they can break barriers in the career of their choice,” said Hilary Jackson, vice president of technology at Capital One Financial Services. “Through programs like Innovate(her), girls are encouraged to explore, create and innovate in order to build skills that will make their future even brighter.”

Hilary Jackson, VP of Technology, Capital One Financial Services

Capital One works with partners like UTD across the region to make its Future Edge commitment come to life. Future Edge is an initiative aimed to help more Americans get the skills, tools and resources they need to succeed in the 21^st century. As part of this initiative, Future Edge DFW symbolizes Capital One’s commitment to make Dallas-Fort Worth a destination for top talent, spur growth as a world-renowned technology hub and nurture the leaders of tomorrow.

Monica Shortino, Arthur Gregg, Hilary Jackson, Dresden Goldberg, Sarah Crowe, Kim Warren, and Denyse Carpio