Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
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Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Dr. Adrienne Starks: Empowering Youth and Communities Through STREAM Education at Stream Innovations
Discover the transformative journey of Dr. Adrienne Starks, founder and CEO of Stream Innovations, as she shares her remarkable mission to empower youth through education and innovation. Join us as we unravel the story behind her Birmingham-based nonprofit that opens doors to STREAM (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Arts, and Math) education for students in underserved communities. With a focus on fostering curiosity and problem-solving skills, Dr. Starks reveals how her organization helps young minds embrace challenges with perseverance, all while having fun. Learn about the critical role early exposure to supportive environments plays in shaping the passion and career paths of future leaders.
We'll also tackle common misconceptions about nonprofit work and the unique challenges Dr. Starks faces as an African-American woman in this sector. From the scarcity myths to the surprising skepticism she encounters, we dive into the importance of leadership tools, advocacy, and shifting from a survival mindset to one of thriving. Gain insights into how Stream Innovations creates inclusive spaces for students of all backgrounds, and explore ways to support their mission—whether through partnerships, investments, or simply spreading the word. Tune in for an inspiring conversation about the power of lifelong learning and community impact.
#gnpbirmingham #StreamInnovations #YouthEmpowerment #EducationForAll #STEMtoSTREAM #CommunityImpact #FutureLeaders #InspiringChange #WomenInLeadership #NonprofitLife #BirminghamAL #InclusiveEducation #EmpoweringYouth #BreakingBarriers #AfricanAmericanLeaders #CuriosityDriven #InnovationInEducation #SupportNonprofits #EducationalEquity #LeadershipMatters #AdvocacyForAll #STEMEducation #LifelongLearning #YouthDevelopment #SupportLocal
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, patricia Blondheim, and today we're speaking to Good Neighbor Dr Adrienne Starks, and Dr Starks is the founder and CEO of Stream Innovations here in Birmingham, alabama. Dr Starks, how are you today? I am well. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Oh, it's my pleasure. So let's start out by telling our listeners what is Stream Innovations.
Speaker 3:Thank you again so much. Stream Innovations is an educational nonprofit that is based, headquartered in Birmingham, alabama, and STREAM is an acronym for Science, technology, reading, engineering, arts and Math, and with this organization, what we do is we provide educational programming for students in underrepresented and underserved communities with high expectations for their success. We do hands-on programming so that we can provide experiences. That our hope is that it develops a spark for them to understand what are some things that I would love to do, I would like to do, but also what are some things that I know for a fact. I don't like that, and I think both are equally important, as young students are trying to establish and determine what their purpose is and what they like to do and how they want to go about changing the world.
Speaker 2:So important. First of all, I would like to go back to something that we talked about before we came into the studio, and that is that part of this program is to develop high expectations, through your expectations of these students, that these students can start to adapt to high expectations. This, to me, it's not as much about science, math, technology as it is about creating a human being who's able to explore their world through challenging themselves. Am I wrong?
Speaker 3:You are definitely on point With expectations, we also include problem solving and critical thinking. With high expectations, we also incorporate fun and being able to deconstruct why you felt that this was fun. Or, on the simple side, maybe you've never experienced this before and there's this new spark where you didn't know that this was something that you liked. So there's discovery and there's curiosity that's connected to all of this as well around our high expectations, and you know to reiterate that high expectations doesn't mean perfection. High expectations mean pushing each student, pushing themselves to their best, and that looks different for every student and for us to be sensitive to that but also challenge them in that space to push beyond what they felt. Their first level of comfort is to go to that next level where they had to potentially dig a little bit deeper to solve a problem or to think a little bit more critically around why something works the way that it does.
Speaker 2:Why is that important?
Speaker 3:There are a number of reasons why that's important and I will say for me it's a part of my journey as a kid, as a young student. I love science and for Christmas I asked for a microscope and that was an opportunity for me to explore a world that you wouldn't normally see with your naked eye, and it created an opportunity for me to increase my level of curiosity around things in front of me. But this wasn't done in the classroom, this was done at home. So the expectation wasn't for me to identify who I wanted to be, you know, as a third grader. But what my parents did and I'm thankful for that is they were supportive of providing a space where I can go beyond what my initial expectations were for myself.
Speaker 3:So it may have been initially, you know, I looked at the microscope and maybe a couple minutes, and then, you know, after using it, hours of play, hours and hours of play, and what that ties into is, later on in life, deciding that science was the thing that I loved, and going to school to pursue my phd.
Speaker 3:And little did I know in graduate school I would be at a microscope again for hours and hours. So establishing, so establishing high expectations and critical thinking and problem solving at a young age helps flex and expand that muscle around the thing that you actually like to do and it will give you an opportunity to continue to pursue it, even when it's hard. It will give you the opportunity to continue to pursue it even when you fail multiple times. And doing that as having those experiences along the way helps with grit, helps with fortitude, helps with perseverance, because you have no one told you that this is the thing that you had to do. You internally said I like this and I want to keep doing it. I want to continue to pursue it because I want to be able to answer that question. I want to be able to solve that problem. I want to be able to develop that solution for whatever it is. For me it was science, but the same can be true for any discipline.
Speaker 2:This is not necessarily. This is such an enriched program. Um, and I'm I'm was a former educator, so I get really enthusiastic about this idea that you have built into this program. The high expectations for me, huge, huge, because that that enables us right. That doesn't that right. That's not something external, that's something internal. If we have low expectations of somebody, they tend to land just below those low expectations. But if we have high expectations, we work as human beings to exceed those high expectations and I think that is just a wonderful formula. And then brilliant you, wonderful you. You built in play and fun into this. Like not just be, not just three-year-old play, like 12-year-old play, 15-year-old play, 16-year-old play. What about? I'm 60, I'm into 60-year-old play. This is a such huge part of how our brains work and how we stay motivated to be lifelong learners and lifelong achievers and lifelong growers. I'm so excited that you're opening this world up.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate it. It has been a journey. It's been fun, it's had challenges, but we're still doing it. We still see more opportunities to be able to give to students in communities that are in urban and rural communities as well, across the state of Alabama.
Speaker 2:Let's talk a little about the challenges. How did you get here? From your PhD looking through a microscope to here?
Speaker 3:I will say that this was very unexpected. I did not pursue multiple degrees in science that led me to a bachelor's at Alabama A&M University, a PhD in biological sciences at the University of Maryland, baltimore County, and been doing a postdoc at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, maryland, around breast and prostate cancer. That had to happen. To continue to pursue that and then to make a very strong pivot to nonprofit work was not something that I could have imagined or planned. To be very honest with you, it was something that occurred where God pivoted my life. To be very honest with you, it was not something that I desired and I think in the very beginning I fought against it very hard and over the years, even with some of the challenges of not just starting and standing up a nonprofit but being able to articulate and create programming that I've only seen in my mind, with the hope that it lands and connects with students, and then that actually happening and then having to do it again, having to do fundraising, developing relationships within the community, establishing myself as not just a scientist but also as a business, owner of a founder for a nonprofit. All of those things came with different challenges for how to master and how to become good at.
Speaker 3:Right now, one of my greatest next level challenge and I'll say a challenge because I'm actively pursuing it is around leadership. Leadership is a big part where you're leading a team, where you're casting a vision for an organization, where you are doing. We have some very new far-reaching initiatives that we're getting ready to embark on and for those initiatives I can't do them alone. So it means that I have to bring other people to the table. It means that I have to trust the expertise of others for the betterment of communities, for the betterment of students across the state. So it is stretching my capacity as a leader to be able to influence as well as connect with the good in people, and doing that is not something that many of us I'll say.
Speaker 3:For me, I didn't just wake up, and all of that happens naturally. It's working at it. It's learning to trust your gut. It's also learning to listen to people. It's also coming back to center in your values as to why this is important. When it gets hard, when you have challenges, you have challenges around. You know different people working together that have different personalities. You know how do you still connect them to the real meaning and mission of why we're doing what we're doing, and oftentimes there's not a playbook for how you do that.
Speaker 2:Zero playbook for that Do. I have a playbook for that do I have a playbook for that? It's no playbook for that. That's why I love that you're building these, these leadership techniques, into these young individuals. You know what we just we had to invent it, both as women definitely right, as women as people involved in non-profits. This is not.
Speaker 2:They don't hand you your business license and an instruction book along with it no, not at all not at all and the things that you're opening up, like resourcing, learning on your feet, failing and trying again and failing and trying again and measuring having your own inner metric right or measuring your progress, learning how to pivot, how to think on your feet right, how not to marry an idea but marry. You know, you can marry your goals, but you can't marry an idea about how to get to your goals. And you're giving this to these people who are they're young adults. Right, they might be, they might be five, they might be, they might be seven, but to me they're young adults, because that's what we're building right we, we are, and what I often tell my team is that we work with younger humans.
Speaker 3:They just haven't been on the planet as long, and what we're trying to do is instill upon them tools that they can use on their journey as they get older, and that's the big part of it.
Speaker 2:I wish I had known you when I was young. You weren't even, probably you weren't conceived when I was young, but just in my brain. I would have loved to have a resource like you in my life when I was young, and I love that you're doing this. A lot of people, when they meet you, they must have a lot of misconceptions about what it is that you do or who it is that you work with.
Speaker 3:Can you kind of bust some of those? For me, yes, lots of misconceptions. One, you know, starting off as an African-American woman that is also a scientist, there's either a sense of trying to figure out why am I in a nonprofit space when I could be doing anything else except for this? There is this misconception around. I think initially, when I returned back to Alabama, if I would stick with this, if this was just something I was doing for fun or something I was doing just to challenge myself and nine years later I'm still here. I think as well.
Speaker 3:The misconception with the organization oftentimes is sometimes people say we do too much. Sometimes people say we do too much. Sometimes people question if it takes all of that to do in a community and for some of our students I have also heard them say that we've never had someone that cared this much. So they have some level of trepidation in trusting that there is someone that wants good for them. That's not a parent and that's not a teacher, and we are really clear that we are not either. I gave them the title as champions. We really work hard for your success. We're not your parents, we're not your teachers. We champion your success. So there's some hard lessons as well. There's accountability, there are expectations, but we want to be a champion to support you, and that term came from my work as a scientist, where it's great to have an advisor, it's great to have a mentor, but if you have a champion for your success, that's different. They kind of go through the fire with you at times and they think.
Speaker 3:The other misconception in nonprofit work is the perception of scarcity, that there is only so much that a nonprofit needs in order to be moderately successful.
Speaker 3:Because I don't think we don't treat nonprofit organizations around funding and resources and support in a way that we want to see them thrive, and what thriving looks like is different for every organization. So, whether it is foundations and grants or donors, you know it's giving. Just enough to say that you gave with the expectation that they should make do with whatever is given right. I fully understand that there are some organizations that have mismanaged, that have scammed and that have done, you know, very unscrupulous things with funding. So there needs to be some accountability. So I'm not taking that away. But the expectation that you placed on many nonprofits is to change and fix the world with minimal resources and minimal support, with high expectations for them to do that and that makes it very difficult to shift that mindset and being able to advocate for the need to be able to advocate for what we need and justifying what we need to advocate for what we need. In justifying what we need, and I think the last misconception with nonprofits is that we aren't real businesses.
Speaker 2:We are yeah. Oh yeah, if you're not, then you're going to be out of nonprofit business very, very quickly. You, you are you are.
Speaker 3:So it's how you're treated at the table as a partner. It is the expectations that you don't have as much to give as far as your capacity. And oftentimes it's true, and that's because what I just said earlier, the expectation is not for us to thrive, it is just merely to survive. So I think the probably the last expectation or misconception that I have that I felt that has been directed towards me is when I show up in the room, people do not expect me a African American, Black woman with multiple degrees, with a level of business acumen that has no problem advocating not just for my organization but also the students that I serve, and very serious about it. Some may say you know, with that level of focus, that it can be intimidating or it can be intense. And my counter to that, which is why I will still go into rooms the same way that I do, is my earbuds keep popping out and popping in.
Speaker 3:The reason that I'll continue to go into rooms the way that I do is because there are students today in our great state of Alabama that are studying, that are striving for AIDS, that have achieved that particularly in some of our rural communities as well and the highest expectation that they have for themselves is to work at fast food so that they can get health insurance.
Speaker 3:That is a problem, and if we are okay with this cycle in our communities continuing to be what they are, then I am someone that you will have a misconception about why I go as hard as I do, and we may never reconcile that. We may be on opposite sides of that and that's also okay, but I don't think it's okay for that to be the expectation that we have for students in our state and in spaces where someone like myself that started off wanting a microscope for Christmas, then going to be a scientist in a nationally federal lab looking at breast and prostate cancer. I'm not a unicorn, but there were people that provided opportunities for me and that were champions for me, and that's how I was able to be in the spaces that I was in and that were champions for me, and that's how I was able to be in the spaces that I was in High expectations.
Speaker 2:What would the world be if we all just held high expectations for everyone that we met? What a world we would open up for them. You know, high expectations, that's where doors open right.
Speaker 3:I completely agree. What makes it tricky is that it's often confused with perfection, and perfection is something that is unattainable.
Speaker 3:It's completely unattainable. But high expectations is not just your work ethic, it is also accountability. It is also wanting the best for the people that are around you as well, as well as wanting the best for yourself. So if I have high expectations for myself and we're in the same space I also have high expectations for you, and you should also have high expectations for me, because there are goals and there are things that we are attempting to do. The celebration that comes on the other end of us achieving, when we all feel as if we have given our best, that's an amazing feeling.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's amazing. And it changes the world. Right, it does. Low expectations have never changed anyone. There is either low expectation or high expectation. There's no medium expectation. There's no neutrality in that. There is only the mindset that says I expect nothing of you or I expect you to change the world.
Speaker 3:We all come to work together and play together with different expectations for each other, based upon gender or race or religion, and those expectations make us treat people differently.
Speaker 2:They really do. They really do, they really do. Fix it, dr Starks, can we?
Speaker 3:do that. It's going to take a lot more than me, but I'm doing my part.
Speaker 2:I feel like Mr Rogers of podcasts right now. Won't you be my neighbor? Anyway, let's talk about how you feed yourself, because you pour so much into the community.
Speaker 3:What do you do to feed yourself, dr Starks? This year I've done a much better job of feeding myself, and I love going to the beach. I love traveling. It's an opportunity to step away from the work but also experience the world in ways that can either leave you in awe or provide a space of comfort and release that is needed when you're on a grind on a regular basis. Spending more time with family is important, because I think coming out of the pandemic and losing people, the importance of having relationships, the importance of having good memories with people that mean something to you, is also very, very important to me, and I think, lastly, my new thing since working with Stream Innovations is Legos. I will put together a Lego set to help me, like, declutter everything else that's going on. I have instructions, I have pieces and there is a goal to complete it, and that is something that helps me to de-stress. But also, at the end, I have this product, which I think is amazing.
Speaker 2:It's very zen, right? I'm a big fan of Legos. No one likes stepping on them. No one likes stepping on them, but I love playing with them. 60 years old, I will go at a Lego set. Anyway, I digress. Let's give our listeners what you would like them to take away about stream innovations.
Speaker 3:I started Stream Innovations because I'm from Fairfield, alabama, which is right outside of Birmingham, and the community that I was raised in held a special place for me, a community. There were high expectations for my success, not just because of who, my family, what family I was in, but also I heard about teachers and educators and business owners having a level of expectation for their students or people in their family. So, leaving that space, leaving that city and that community, there was a certain way that I looked at the world. So, as I went to pursue degrees and careers, everyone was on social media around that time and was reflecting on what was happening in my city and it did not reflect what I grew up at and the resources and the people that I had at my disposal to be able to pour and to invest into me in the ways that made me who I make me who I am today. So the idea was to start an organization that that would provide some resources, but my plan was to do it from Maryland. I had no intention of staying in Alabama. Resources, but my plan was to do it for Maryland. I had no intention of staying in Alabama, but God saw differently. So I've been here for about 10 years, and what I want people to take away from this is what it looks like when you're intentional about changing your community based upon you know what resources you have, as well as your experiences, as well as wanting good for others, and I think that's a core part of what Stream Innovations does.
Speaker 3:We start programming with students at third grade and my plan was to just do third through maybe ninth grade, and we've had students to say, all right, dr Starks, thanks so much for this year's program, because we also do a coding boot camp. What are you going to do with us next year? And they continued to say that over and over. So we had to extend the age limit beyond what I thought we would. Over the years, we've had people to have some amazing experiences with our students because they took the time to give of themselves and their expertise, with high expectations for students to connect and to excel, and that's what happened. We have our community of students, includes public, private and homeschool students, and we create an environment where they can excel, where you can quote, unquote, find your tribe of people that like to problem solve, and it doesn't mean that you have to be a straight A student to be connected. It's a desire and it doesn't mean that you have to be a straight-A student to be connected. It's a desire and it's a want to do something more for discovery, and maybe you've never done it before but you want an opportunity to try. Let's do that.
Speaker 3:So with STREAM, the acronym kind of incorporates a little bit of everything, so everyone is welcome at the table for what we do and it connects directly to workforce. So in third grade all the way to eighth grade or to college, you have consistently found an interest in a thing let's say it's engineering, let's say that it's science and you continue to kind of feel excited about doing this thing over and over again. You carry that with you as an adult. You carry that with you, you know, as you're pursuing new ideas, as you are creating solutions at the company that you work for or starting your own company. And what I want to take with people is the importance of what it also looks like to give back. So that is another big component of Stream Innovations. We are a vehicle in which people can give back to students to be a part of their tribe, and if their tribe is art, if their tribe is health or automotive.
Speaker 3:We want to create spaces where students can identify the thing that they can love to do, that can set their soul on fire to some extent, because oftentimes that's why adults continue to do the things that they're doing in their careers.
Speaker 3:There was a passion that started long, long, long ago and they continue to do it. And my thing is, what does it look like, if we are intentional about creating those spaces for students to be not just lifelong learners, which is important, but they pursue this thirst for curiosity and discovery in our world, and how much that will make our world better and be impactful, positively impact our world? So, lastly, it is. You know people ask well, how do we support you? And it is what costs you. Nothing is to speak our name. Stream innovations in spaces that you think we should be, stream innovations in spaces that you think we should be. That costs nothing, in addition to the importance of investing in us financially and wanting to connect with us, wanting to partner with us as a company or as an individual. All of those things are under the umbrella of what we need and we cannot survive without good partners.
Speaker 2:Well, let's get more people in contact with you. Dr Starks, how can they contact you at Stream Innovations?
Speaker 3:We are headquartered in Birmingham, alabama, on the South Side, 20th Street South, and the easiest way to connect with us is via social media Facebook, instagram, linkedin. Also our website, which gives you a lot more information about what we do, and that is streaminnovationsorg S-T-R-E-A-M. Innovationspluralorg.
Speaker 2:Dr Starks, how can the people, our listeners, connect with you?
Speaker 3:Thank you. Stream Innovations is the easiest way. Our website is the easiest way to connect. That is stream S-T-R-E-A-M. Innovationspluralorg. As well as social media. You can find us on Facebook, instagram and LinkedIn with Stream Innovations and to contact us directly. If you go onto the website, there is a way that you can contact us directly if you would like someone to follow up with you.
Speaker 2:Wonderful Dr Starks, thank you so much for coming by and sharing your wonderful program Stream Innovations, and I hope this is not the last time we meet.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I appreciate the invitation and the conversation and I agree. I hope this is not the last time.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor podcast. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPBirminghamcom. That's GNPBirminghamcom, or call 205-952-0148. You.