WATCH: California Teen’s App Is Inspiring Girls & Young Women to Go Into STEM

Rebecca Wang, 17, is a 2023 Apple Swift Challenge winner for her app, Dare to Dream, with the aim to inspire girls & young women to enter STEM fields.

When the only two other girls in Rebecca Wang’s high school computer science class were absent, she felt uncomfortable. 

“It’s not that the boys weren’t welcoming to me,” she said. “It was more that I didn’t see other girls in the classroom.”

Rebecca, a 17-year-old from San Jose, California, decided to do something about it. Her app, Dare to Dream, aims to inspire girls and young women to go into coding. 

Her app presents a gallery of historical and contemporary women in STEM and shows facts about gender parity, like the statistic that 30% of those who take the Advanced Placement Computer Science course are women. It also links to resources like Girls Who Code where girls can get involved in coding.

Rebecca’s friend suggested that she submit Dare to Dream to Apple’s Swift Student Challenge, a competition for student software developers. She was among 375 students who won this year. Rebecca hopes to grow the app’s reach and have it translated into multiple languages. 

For the future, Rebecca wants to found a startup that focuses on issues such as gender parity. 

“I wanted to be a person and a changemaker that other girls can admire,” she said.

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