How We Started
In 2016, co-founder Kendra Klemann started volunteering at Family Promise, an emergency shelter for families. The LEGO robotics kits she brought with her had so much interest that she started finding other volunteers to get involved. The volunteer group started to write specialized curricula and facilitate workshops at Family Promise to keep up with the interest of kids and teens. Eventually, community members became interested in the initiative, and Engineering Opportunity was created in response. Engineering Opportunity strives to promote equity and accessibility in education through our workshops.
Kendra Klemann
Co-founder
Kendra is a graduate of North Carolina State University with degrees in Civil Engineering and Spanish. She is also heavily involved in the theater community at NCSU and loves to work backstage. She co-founded Engineering Opportunity as a way to increase accessibility in STEM. She used to work as a camp counselor for track out and summer LEGO robotics camps and quickly realized how expensive the robots and the enrichment camps can get and wanted to ensure that these opportunities were accessible to all.
Lauren Siegel
Co-founder
Lauren Siegel is a recent graduate of NC State University and passionate about disability justice and accessibility in education. She loves working with children and teens interested in Computer Science and Engineering and developing projects that spark their interest in STEM. In her free time, Lauren can usually be found listening to music or spending too much time on Twitter.
Leadership Emeritus
Sol Khaitas: Assistant Director, Partner Coordinator
As Assistant Director and Partner Coordinator, Sol helped propel our organization forward. She brought us new partners, and was an invaluable part of the team, helping bring us to new venues and events to help us spread information on our org to others, helping us increase our volunteer outreach.
Shannon Rigsbee: Marketing Coordinator
As Marketing Coordinator, Shannon helped convert our website to a more easy to update system, and assisted in outreach to people outside of our organization