Who are we?

Girls x Math is a nonprofit mentorship program aimed at fostering a love of math in third and fourth graders who identify as girls.

While the gender gap in STEM is widely recognized, we have found that few organizations focus on encouraging young girls to pursue math in elementary school, a crucial developmental time in girls’ lives, as many young girls begin to stray from math when they enter middle school.

Girls x Math gives students an opportunity to work with high school mentors to solve open-ended, contextual math problems that build on the skills they learned in third and fourth grade. Girls x Math teaches how math is applicable outside of the classroom and that there are multiple approaches to solving a problem. Girls x Math promotes a supportive math community and teaches collaborative and creative problem-solving skills. Most of all, students learn that math is fun! Topics are explored through challenge problems, art projects, games, and much more.

What do we do?

Girls x Math meets weekly, either in-person or virtually. High school mentors are paired with 2-3 elementary school students to work together on math problems, projects, and games. This pairing allows the young students to form lasting relationships with their inspiring mentors, while encouraging a love of math. Girls x Math provides all necessary activities and lesson plans for these sessions.

Our story

Maia Posternack, Founder of Girls x Math, is a senior at the Trinity School in New York City. Maia is an avid math student and mentor and is the captain of the Trinity math team, runs a math tutoring program, and has attended multiple non-Trinity math programs and classes in her career as a student. During this time, she noticed how many girls had lost interest in math over the years, even though they were just as capable as the boys. Maia aspired to help remedy this and began researching the root of the problem. At what age were girls losing interest in math? Why? And what type of program would genuinely help mitigate the issue? Maia wanted to make sure that Girls x Math was a program that appealed to young students and that it would significantly alter future classroom dynamics. After a year of research, Maia founded the first chapter of Girls x Math in 2019. Maia discovered that after starting Girls x Math, the number of girls who chose to attend extracurricular math programs when they approached middle school increased four-fold! Since then, Girls x Math has expanded to include additional chapters as well as free summer camps.