“Engineers are boys.” That’s what Komal Singh, program manager in engineering at Google, remembers her four-year-old daughter telling her before deciding to write a children’s book about a girl who loves STEM. Men make up 75 percent of the STEM workforce. Now Singh is encouraging girls — specifically girls of color, to dive into the fields of STEM with her new book and passion project Ara the Star Engineer. Singh partnered with other women in Google to write and develop the new book. The senior director of technical program management, Kripa Krishnan; the engineering director, Parisa Tabriz; Google fellow, Diane Tang; and the vice president, Marian Croak–are all featured in and helped Komal author the book. Ipek Konak also assisted by working on illustrations. Photo: Komal Singh Singh said she wants her books to trigger curiosity in STEM for children and for kids to become more comfortable using terms such as “algorithm” and “troubleshooting.” “I want them to see women engineering...