Johns Hopkins University

Decode “jpwoly”. Two years ago, I began an all-girls Cybersecurity team, competing in the national Girls Go Cyberstart competition. It seems obvious that a group of people with varied backgrounds and experiences could generate better ideas on keeping personal information safe, yet cybersecurity is one of the least diverse STEM fields – in 2017, it was 11% female. Sometimes when the community you want doesn’t exist, it means creating your own. During the competition, we four girls spent a week completing hundreds of challenges in cryptography, web analysis, Linux, python, steganography, and…