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Contact FormThere's a moment I live for. A girl finishes the thing she was sure she couldn't build. That moment, the one where she realizes she can, is why we exist. It's also why I can't stop thinking about the number 20,000.
That's how many girls we have set out to reach by 2028. It's the most ambitious goal we have ever named, and I believe it's both completely attainable and absolutely necessary. The girls are already doing the work. What's missing is the room built around them. We know how to build that room now, and we know how to build many more of them.
This year deepened my conviction. I watched girls graduate with their degrees in STEM. I watched girls have their moment on stage, then come back, year after year, to have it again. Every one of them is proof that when a girl is given the room, she owns it.
What you'll read in these pages is not a finished story. We are one year into a three-year plan, mid-build, learning as we go. But I have never been more sure of where we're heading, or what it means for these girls, their families, and a world that needs every one of them.
Let me show you what we're building.
Yamilée Toussaint
Founder & CEO
I grew up a Black girl in the Bronx and Harlem. So when I stand in a STEM From Dance program and a girl looks up at me, I get to tell her the truest thing I know: I'm you.
That's why I'm here. I saw this mission up close in 2019, at the Haitian Roundtable Trailblazer awards, where Yamilée was on stage telling the STEM From Dance story. By the end of the night I'd walked over to her. I didn't have a title or a plan. I just knew I should be helpful, and I told her to put me to work. She did.
I believe boards are culture carriers, but only when leaders make space for them. What I've valued most is being invited into the programs, the team, and the room to witness our mission in action. I've stood in our summer Camp and watched 10-year-old girls solder the circuit boards that power their own dance performances. I've seen a girl show up on day one unsure she belongs, and come back a week later witnessing how her confidence has increased by the number of times she raises her hand.
That is what we are building, and it's why I'm asking everyone reading this to give what they have. Your dollars, your story, your network, the doors only you can open. All of it moves this work forward. We are at a real moment of growth. Come build it with us.
Nakia James-Jenkins
Board Chair
Walk into any STEM From Dance program and you'll see girls building something. An LED-lit costume they've programmed. An AI model they've trained themselves. A performance choreographed to data they collected. We teach AI, computer science, data science, and engineering through dance in communities where talent is most often overlooked.
Dance opens the door and powers the learning that follows. Most of the girls in our programs love to dance and have been told, often without anyone saying it out loud, that STEM is not for them. Inside a dance, the conditions in the room shift. There is less intimidation, more joy, and a more direct line between what they are doing and who they are. The concepts move through their bodies as well as their minds. By the time a girl performs the lighting sequence she coded, the learning has already taken hold.
Rooms where girls are treated as the future of computer science, AI, or engineering are still rare. The girls themselves are already doing the work. What has to be built is the room around them. STEM From Dance is building those rooms, wherever the girls already are, and equipping them to become the innovators, engineers, and creators the world needs. On the other side of those rooms are careers in STEM and the kinds of lives those careers make possible — for the girls and for the families and communities they come from.
Every girl deserves to discover her power in STEM, whether she dreams of it today or hasn't yet imagined the possibilities. Through groundbreaking programs like our new Pop Ups and Clubs, we're making our transformative approach accessible to more girls nationwide. Now, every girl can discover her STEM potential through dance, whether for a day, a season, or a life-changing journey. Our expanded program ecosystem meets girls wherever they are, igniting confidence and creating lasting pathways to STEM success.
Programs that run across the 10-month school year, embedded in schools and community organizations. STEM From Dance trains the adults already in girls' lives in a free, dance-integrated STEM curriculum. Facilitators set the schedule and run it in the format that fits.
One day with STEM From Dance, traveling wherever the need is. Pop Ups welcome new girls into the program, give returning girls another opportunity to build, and show up alongside other work being done in the community.
Three weeks of full-day programming in the summer. Girls program LED-lit costumes, code computer-generated animations, and design data visualizations across the three weeks. Each Camp closes with a showcase: the girls perform choreography featuring the technology they built, in front of their families and communities.
STEM From Dance serves as a navigator. As girls near high school graduation, we connect them with advanced programs, internships, college pathways, and career accelerators that fit their interests. The relationship continues past graduation; girls choose the next step with STEM From Dance still in the room.
An AI-powered platform that produces custom recommendations for each girl's next step. Connect sees what she has done, what interests her, where she lives, and where she is in school. Recommendations include events, courses, content, and organizations, inside STEM From Dance and beyond.
Breaking Movement Into Ordered Steps
Breaking Complex Problems Into Patterns and Logical Steps
Music, Timing, Group Size, Tech
Weighing Tradeoffs to Build the Best Solution Under Real Limits
Synchronizing Many Independent Parts Into One Whole
Building, Testing, and Refining a Shared Solution as a Team
2025 was year one of a three-year strategic plan. The work is mid-stream. The following is what we set out to do, what we have built, and what year one has taught us.
Reach 20,000 girls across programs by 2028.
Triple the national average in STEM confidence and belonging.
Build the team, systems, and financial model to lead at scale.
These are the three things year one has clarified about how the work actually scales, where it gets harder, and what the data is telling us. They are working hypotheses, sharpened by the first twelve months of building and tested against what we are seeing on the ground.
Year one sharpened the case for Clubs. The facilitator-powered design features the same dance-integrated curriculum our team delivers in person. The rigor is just as deep, but the reach compounds. Schools and community organizations host Clubs using existing infrastructure, and girls learn from adults they already know and trust. Every facilitator we train becomes a lasting resource for STEM learning in their community, and the cost per girl is far lower than the cost of in-person programming run by our own team. Clubs are how the work grows.
Year one clarified that quality at scale is something we can build deliberately, not something we trade away as we grow. The clearest predictors of whether a Club succeeds are two things we control: how strong and accessible the content is, and how well the facilitator has been trained to teach it. We hold every site to the same bar, no matter where programming happens or who leads it. Shared measurement tools track quality across all our locations, and the data feeds a continual refinement of both the content and the approach. With a new facilitator training platform in place, that consistency travels, letting us grow the number of Clubs while raising the quality inside them.
STEM From Dance has historically been funded primarily by philanthropic institutions that share our vision and commitment to innovation. That mix has built the organization to where it is, and it has also meant that priorities at any one funder can shift the ground under us. Year one has been a year of adapting to those shifts. What it has shown us is the value of multi-year commitments that let us plan past one grant cycle, flexible funding that can move where the work most needs it, and the networks and relationships that open doors when one closes. The work has to be fundable through the shifts.
When Kaya walked into her first STEM From Dance camp in the summer of 2022, she was eleven years old, just out of the pandemic, and not used to being around other kids. “I was very introverted back then,” she recalls. “I was really scared of making friends.” She was vaguely interested in coding and dance, but neither felt like a path forward.
STEM From Dance tracks what changes for the girls in our community: where they find belonging, how they see themselves in STEM, and what their families are seeing alongside them. These are the leading indicators research links to whether a girl enrolls in a STEM degree and enters a STEM career years later.
On The Jennifer Hudson Show, Yamilée Toussaint shared STEM From Dance's story and the girls building the next generation of STEM talent.
Physics Today profiled Yamilée Toussaint and STEM From Dance, charting her path from MIT engineer to founder of a national STEM organization for girls.
In a Science News Explores feature on how movement and culture expand who participates in science, STEM From Dance was profiled as a leading example.
STEM From Dance prepares girls to shape the future of AI, because AI
is already shaping their world. Our programs build career pathways to
the rooms where AI is engineered.
We teach girls to prompt AI
video generators, train machine learning models, and create AI-generated
music alongside their choreography. Across modules, they learn what AI
is, how it works, where its limits sit, and how to use it responsibly.
The
skills necessary to both use and develop AI models are skills we have
taught through dance for years: computational thinking, pattern
recognition, and creative problem-solving. The field will keep evolving,
and the foundation underneath does not change: the girls who learn to
build with AI here are learning to shape the technology shaping their
generation.
For seven years, Dr. Kayla DesPortes, Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and her research team have conducted an NSF-funded investigation of STEM From Dance as a model for culturally sustaining computing education. Their methodology is Design-Based Research: iterative, collaborative, and built alongside SFD's instructors, students, and leadership. In collaboration with Dr. Kathleen McDermott of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Dr. DesPortes has conducted formal interviews, curriculum co-design, custom technology development, and in-situ studies with students across multiple cohorts.
Dr. DesPortes was drawn to STEM From Dance because it places art and STEM on equal footing. She took note early on that Yamilée takes dance just as seriously as code and didn't want the arts content introduced as an afterthought. "The future of STEM is creativity," she says. "STEM From Dance has been consistently ahead of the curve in understanding this."
The NYU team grounds SFD's model in two well-established learning frameworks: embodied learning and constructionism. Students learn by doing, making, and physically connecting ideas. When a girl codes LEDs to respond to her own movement, she integrates body, sensor, electronics, and code into a single experience. To support this, the research team developed and tested two purpose-built tools in direct collaboration with SFD: danceON, a culturally responsive creative computing environment, and DanceBits, a wearable electronics kit built with locking connectors, the first of their kind designed to withstand dance movement.
Across multiple qualitative studies, the research team documented consistent findings: girls experience STEM From Dance as an exceptional bonding experience and an exceptional amount of growth in their confidence and technical skills. The mechanism, Dr. DesPortes explains, is STEM identity: the internalized belief that "you ARE a STEM person," which research links directly to persistence in the field.
The NYU team characterizes SFD as a "high-stakes learning environment," parallel to competitive robotics teams, which have historically skewed male. The final performance is both a huge motivator and a stressor for everyone involved. Dr. DesPortes identifies this tension as part of what makes STEM From Dance unique.
As SFD scales its Clubs program nationally, the NYU team is focused on how the model's rigor, community-building, and culture can travel to new sites. Their current work centers on curriculum documentation and hardware outcomes for first-time facilitators, areas where stronger infrastructure protects the quality that drives results. Science News Explores featured this research in January 2026, placing SFD's model among a broader effort to expand what computing education can be and who it can reach.
Every dollar fuels our mission: expanding opportunities for girls of color in STEM. Our financials reflect a strong foundation and the momentum to grow our impact even further.
| Total Revenues for the Year Ended June 30, 2025 | Without Donor Restrictions | With Donor Restrictions | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate contributions | $1,521,426 | $0 | $1,521,426 |
| Foundation contributions | $673,651 | $400,000 | $1,073,651 |
| Individual contribution | $41,724 | $0 | $41,724 |
| Government grants | $66,474 | $0 | $66,474 |
| Program service fees | $9,185 | $0 | $9,185 |
| Interest income | $368 | $0 | $368 |
| Net assets released from restrictions | $868,334 | ($868,334) | $0 |
| TOTAL REVENUES | $3,181,162 | ($468,334) | $2,712,828 |
| Total Expenses for the Year Ended June 30, 2025 | Without Donor Restrictions | With Donor Restrictions | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Program Services | $2,332,656 | $0 | $2,332,656 |
| Management & General | $371,441 | $0 | $371,441 |
| Fundraising | $321,099 | $0 | $321,099 |
| TOTAL EXPENSES | $3,025,196 | $0 | $3,025,196 |
| Change in Net Assets | $155,966 | ($468,334) | ($312,368) |
| Net Assets Beginning | $1,041,496 | $3,002,263 | $4,043,759 |
| Net Assets Ending | $1,197,462 | $2,533,929 | $3,731,391 |
The foundations, companies, and government partners listed here invested in STEM From Dance this year. We are grateful for their commitment and their belief in the girls we serve.
The data, partnerships, and outcomes inside this report show what STEM From Dance is building. Join the foundations, companies, and individuals already invested in the work.
Jamie, a K–8 dance teacher in Brooklyn, attended a STEM From Dance showcase and left thinking differently about what skills she could incorporate into her classes. How could she move from audience member to facilitator?
Jamie discovered SFD Clubs, a free curriculum run by local facilitators. She walked her principal through the model. He gave her an enthusiastic "yes" the same day.
In Jamie's Club, third- and fifth-graders learned coding, AI, music technology, and the science behind breakdance battles. The curriculum "takes you everywhere," says Jamie.
One Club highlight, says Jamie, is that the kids take the lead, choosing themes, working in groups, teaching each other. "I'm no more the sage on the stage," she observes. "I'm the guide on the side."
One standout lesson was Going Viral. Girls analyzed the videos they already loved, decoded the patterns that make content spread, and built their own choreography around what they found.
A girl named Samantha started out shy, says Jamie, but Going Viral lit a spark and made her the group’s leader. Another, Callie, is a talented choreographer who coached the other girls and made sure everyone felt good about their dance.
Jamie's first Club cohort performed at Community Circle, the schoolwide showcase. Next year's cohort already wants in. "They saw it and were like, I want to do that," Jamie says.
"This has been life-changing for me," Jamie says. "These girls are our future. They deserve to know they can do well in those spaces, just like everyone else."