11 Betties
Concept and Direction, Strategy, Leadership
Role: Founder + Creative Director
TEAM: 11 Betties
With a laptop, a garage, and a whole lot of enthusiasm, I created and led a nonprofit educational media platform with the mission of breaking open STEM for teen girls. Late nights spent writing articles explaining calculus through pop culture led to a diverse range of editorial, audio, and video content, community-building and fundraising events, mentorship throughout Los Angeles, and a passionate group of collaborators, contributors, and champions.
origins
11 Betties began as a website for teen girls, inspired by a group of highly creative math students I had the joy of working with as my own creative career took shape. Instead of trying to get them to fit into the math, I turned the tables—taking everything that they were into and finding the math in that.
Lady Gaga became a way to understand linear equations; My So-Called Life held the key to multiplying negative numbers; George Clooney’s dating history illustrated how to solve for X, and geometry was everywhere, from parking garages to hairstyles to neon lights.
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Breakups are mathematical. So are TV shows. The beat of a Sex Pistols song is all about math.
Math lives and breathes in pop culture and fashion and art. By discovering the numbers in everything that lights you up, we seek to transform the idea of math from irrelevant and boring to essential and thrilling.
Moving into new mediums, I collaborated with DJ Cams on a math-themed soundtrack Algorhythms, pulling quotes from classic teen media like Freaks and Geeks, Mean Girls, and Clueless, which inspired the name 11 Betties.
As 11 Betties gained a following, the media began to call. BUST Magazine gave early digital and printed press, which was a perfect fit: the original content was influenced, among other things, by magazines like BUST and Sassy.
SPOTLIGHT: HOW I DO MATH
Expanding into video, I interviewed 11 women and girls about how they uniquely do math—receiving lots of organic press and praise.
“This is just everything. The ladies at Grey Sloan Memorial would approve.”
Shonda Rhimes on how i do math
SPOTLIGHT: MATH BRAIN
A PSA in the style of an ’80s infomercial, funded by The Harnisch Foundation and fueled by research and rage.
“Math Brain is the feminist infomercial you’ll actually want to watch.”
LEGACY
Though I’ve hung up my math crown, the 11 Betties spirit remains alive and well. 11 Betties girls have become research scientists, interdisciplinary artists, emerging technologists, Oscar-winning documentarians, creative entrepreneurs, and most importantly: fearless in owning their unique brilliance.
Math turned out to be the perfect laboratory for learning how to solve challenging equations with audacious creativity.