In February 2018, Lindsey Vonn won her third Olympic medal, the bronze in Downhill. She said that would be the last time that she competed in the Olympics as it was too physically strenuous for her. In February she announced that she would be retiring after completing her two fnal races at the 2019 World Championships. Lindsey made history when she won the bronze in downhill: She became the oldest woman (at 34) to earn a medal at a world championships, and was the first female racer to medal at 6 world championships.
Though she may have retired from ski racing, Lindsey’s not going anywhere. A documentary, Lindsey Vonn: The Final Season, will air on HBO in November, and a memoir, Rise: My Story, will be released next year. In more exciting news, her foundation is working to help girls learn about and succeed in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math):
While champion skier Lindsey Vonn is no longer hitting the slopes professionally after announcing her retirement earlier this year, she has something new she is championing.
The former alpine ski racer is now helping young girls become more involved in STEM education through the Lindsey Vonn Foundation. Vonn’s organization recently donated full scholarships to 22 girls to attend a camp with iD Tech, which offers week-long summertime STEM classes for children. Alexa Café is the organization’s camp just for girls.
“At tech companies, it’s a heavily male-dominated occupation and we really want to do things for girls and young kids where there’s a gap,” Vonn, 34, tells PEOPLE. “I’ve always been passionate about my foundation and now that I’m retired I have — maybe not as much time as I had expected — but I still have more time now than I did before. And for me, I want to be involved in every camp.”
“It’s not just my name, it’s me and I want to be involved with these kids and I want to help them on a personal level,” she adds.
Lindsey discussed with People a recent visit with one of the girls who had received a scholarship:
The former Olympian appeared at Caltech University on July 17 to visit one of the scholarships recipients, who developed an app to help people get affordable healthcare, inspired by her own family’s struggles.
“It was incredible to meet her, and see what she’s been working on, and her dreams and aspirations,” Vonn says. “She’s very much an inspiration to others as well, she’s someone that I’m really proud to have her represent our foundation.”
“They’re all creating different objects that they’re printing out on the 3D printer,” Vonn says of the camp. “We watched some kids building computers, which is just insane to me. And I can’t even begin to understand code, let alone how to build a computer.”
I’m so excited that Lindsey’s foundation is working to get more girls involved in STEM fields. The article shared a statistic from the National Girls Collaborative Project: “Women make up half of the total U.S. college-educated workforce, but only 29% of the science and engineering workforce,” something Lindsey wants to help change for the better. The Pew Research Center found that, “Women remain underrepresented in engineering (14%), computer (25%) and physical science (39%) occupations.” The Center looked at the STEM workforce by analyzing Census data from 1990–2016, focusing on the reported jobs of anyone 25 and older who worked in one of 74 different occupations. The Pew article notes that 56% of women with STEM degrees have gone on to get STEM jobs. Hopefully, the work that Lindsey’s foundation is doing will lead to more women enrolling in STEM degree programs, and then choosing to work in a STEM field after graduating.
Photos credit: WENN and via Instagram
This is wonderful! It’s important to send the message of STEM for girls as early as possible. I teach science to 8th graders. If you wait that late to hook them, you won’t excite as many. Encourage their interest in rocks, butterflies, animals, stars, ANYTHING while they are younger, too. I have seen a decrease in the confidence of my girls in the last 5 years or so – I always make sure they know they are amazing and worthy of everything.
Thank you for this, made my morning! She sounds wonderful. Increasingly I’m thinking we need to just keep doing good things wherever we can, even just letting people in front of us at the grocery store or while driving. Let the magats have at their hate and destruction, and let the rest of us continue to just leave them behind. That I think is what they most fear, and that is what they are manifesting. We can’t let it change us or distract us from doing good. Go girl power!
How do you get from kids in front of a computer learning to a rant on politics?
Hey Dota, Hmm, let’s see. Vonn’s org supports women and Trump’s cult loves tearing them down. Doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to me. But calling a comment that advocates for kindness and goodness “a rant?” That is a bit of a stretch.
Thanks Esmom, I appreciate it, and eh Dota, yeah it may have seemed a stretch, just doing my best to focus on good amid all of the noise and anger and ugliness that sometimes feels so overwhelming these days… and LV’s work, and this article, helped so much…
Lindsey Vonn is the sh*t