On this episode of Hazard Girls, we welcome Dr. Hannah Shows, Artificial Intelligence Specialist at Haynes Beffel & Wolfeld LLP. When Dr. Shows was in tenth grade, her geometry teacher told her he would be placing her in a remedial math class “as a favor to her” because she would never use math in her future, he unknowingly set her on a course that changed her life. When she arrived at college she opted to take the more difficult of the available math classes to prove to herself she could do it. It was in that class she found her love for math and math education thanks to a more accessible, open, and diverse teaching style. Since then she’s never looked back.
During her Ph.D. studies, Dr. Shows was working as a programmer. It was there she realized one of the things she loved about the work she was doing was the communication aspect. Her work required her to facilitate collaboration between multiple technical and clinical departments. Overcoming the significant communication barriers between departments is where Dr. Shows found her passion for communication combined with mathematics and engineering.
Outside of her role at the law firm, she helps bridge similar, highly technical communication gaps. Her social media, particularly Instagram, serves as a science communication platform where she helps people overcome the fear and loathing that often comes with math. Her goal is to create a community and foster communication in the interest of changing the landscape of STEM education while growing inclusivity in an often gendered space.
During their discussion, Dr. Shows and Emily touch on unlearning gender code-switching, keeping your femininity when entering traditionally male-dominated fields, strategic gender-typing in the workplace as a norm enforcement mechanism, and strategies for converting bystanders into allies.
