STEM Saturdays: Black UX engineer Khalia Braswell went home to found the tech camp she'd always wanted to attend

When young Khalia Braswell got in trouble for talking in class, her teachers knew what she needed - but they couldn't help. Bored and under-challenged even in her special advanced classes, Braswell eventually found a way to make her downtime more interesting when her mother, Danielle, bought her a computer with their tax return. By high school, she'd discovered a passion for computer science, but she never forgot the longing for mentorship she'd felt as a young woman interested in a STEM career.

Two degrees and several competitive internships later, Braswell left her position as a UX designer for the iPhone in Cupertino to come home to Charlotte and devote herself full-time to the INTech summer camp she'd founded after grad school in 2014. Now her programs teach hundreds of girls in North Carolina and California how to write apps and build websites, and her campers are clamoring for more.