From Middle School to MITRE: Engineering a Talent Pipeline

At MITRE, employees from diverse professional backgrounds come together in the name of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)—but in this instance, perhaps not how you may think. Our STEM Council channels MITRE expertise directly to the next generation of thinkers and doers. 

MITRE’s Business Resource Groups (BRGs)—special-interest communities for staff under our Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) umbrella—provide spaces for employees of similar affinities and their allies to gather and build internal networks. While many BRGs offer outreach opportunities for members to serve their workplace communities, the STEM Council’s focus is wholly outward.

"We're different, because our mission is to bring STEM knowledge, understanding, and awareness to students," explains Elizabeth Borseti, a lead project management specialist for MITRE Labs and communications lead of the STEM Council. "That includes creating a talent pipeline to bring in the best and brightest"—including to MITRE.

Ages, Angles, and Viewpoints

The STEM Council believes STEM is for everybody. Just look at its membership, spread across departments and divisions to include professionals with backgrounds in cyber, health, programming, human resources, and aerospace, to name just a few.

The common thread is a commitment to introducing young minds to STEM topics. This could mean a doing a deep dive on Python programming, coaching robotics and Odyssey of the Mind teams, or leading students on tours of MITRE facilities, such as our BlueTech Lab. Depending on the needs and interest of participating organizations and STEM Council members, the possibilities are infinite.

For students from MIT's Lincoln Laboratory Beaver Works Center, the STEM Council offers a real-world taste of the technology applications to the science they’re learning in class. According to Borseti, about a half-dozen council members provide instruction—in-person and online—for this and other learning experiences aimed at high-schoolers. 

Guillermo Vincentelli, an early-career embedded security engineer, has been team-teaching hardware security and cryptography at Beaver Works with MITRE colleagues for two years. In his experience, an unexpected reward of participation comes when the teacher becomes the student.

"Some of the students ask the kinds of great questions that make us question our own knowledge," Vincentelli says. "To have someone born in 2007 force you to consider highly technical and strikingly nuanced topics—well, that brings me great comfort for who's going to be creating the next generation of products and solutions."

Capture the Flag, Capture a Career

While a student participant in one of MITRE’s Embedded Capture the Flag (eCTF) outreach programs at Tufts University, Ben Janis found the thrill of victory—and a career path. The competition led to conversations with MITRE volunteers, then internships and a job offer. Since 2017, Janis has worked in our Electronic Systems Innovation Center as a senior embedded security engineer.  

Janis says that's why as an early-career professional he chose to get involved in the STEM Council, this time as a mentor. Now as co-chair, he's pumped about working alongside MITRE talent from different divisions in the shared mission of getting students excited about STEM. 

"Our strength as an organization is in our diversity of subject-matter expertise," he explains. "We have members from different departments and leadership levels who pitch in on projects plus propose new ideas for students of all ages."

For Janis, eCTF continues to be a passion project. From the mentoring side of the competition, he’s proud of having a hand in its spread and evolution, particularly in reaching younger students. Originally, eCTF was purely a college- and grad-student-focused program with just four participating universities. But in 2020, that changed, he says.

"A high school reached out to us, asking if they could field a team," Janis recalls. "We said, 'Sure—it's a hard competition, but you're welcome to join.'" That first year, he says, the high-school team made it to the finish line. The next year, they placed third, besting teams from elite universities like MIT and Carnegie-Mellon. In fact, thanks in part to STEM Council recruiting, the tally of global eCTF teams has grown from four in 2016 to 99 in 2024, Janis says.

Building Tomorrow’s Talent

Janis is just one of several current employees whose first exposure to MITRE was via outreach from the STEM Council. It's obviously a perk when MITRE directly benefits from the program, but the primary goal is lighting a spark for tomorrow's tech—regardless of where the students ultimately land.

"It’s great when our programs introduce students to what a company like MITRE can do," Borseti says. "They see our BlueTech Lab, they get to use the flight simulator; they go into open labs and check out our latest robotics efforts."

She continues, "It gets students thinking, 'What could my future in STEM be?'"