#URBAN STEM ZIP#
#URBAN STEM TV#

“I am Hood Smar t because I accept challenges that come my way and face them head on,” Gueye says. In fact, she faced many trials at school that could have prevented her from attaining her dream. “And the quickest way to do that is through television because what they see is what they often believe of themselves, so if we change that image we can begin to change their mindset.”Ĭoumba Gueye, a student who features in the sizzle reel, says she always had a love for Marine Biology but did not think she would go far with that passion.

#URBAN STEM TV#

So that was something that crushed me a little bit when I learned it.Hood Smart: Reality TV Show Celebrates Urban Kids Who Love STEMĪs an assistant principal for a middle school in Maryland, Ball-Lacy wants to go beyond her local community and touch the lives of urban youth across the nation. “STEM right now is big all around the planet and I really wanted to focus on urban students who are STEM scholars because it seems that we are not being shown in those areas,” she says. But we want the flowers to live and live longer. There are some varieties we use that still have that beautiful sweet floral smell, and I would love to use more of those. Because the smell is the releasing of gas and gas kills flowers. Most flowers have actually had the smell bred out of them. “Something I’m going to tell you that’s going to crush you a little bit. We found things like micro-perforation machines that poke laser holes to allow the bouquet to sit in its own little atmosphere environment that to last longer. There’s also some really cool newfangled technology that’s coming out that we’re always looking at. The more we can do to track that and maintain that, the longer they’ll last - both with us, but, more importantly, with the end consumer. They want to be kept perfectly in 34 to 36 degrees. Just like a vegetable that you leave on your countertop versus keeping your fridge - you know that it’s going to last longer if you keep it in your fridge - flowers are no exception. But we also want to ensure we’re really maintaining our cold chain throughout. If not, just data so we can track how people are doing and where people might be struggling within a warehouse environment. There is automation that you can put in warehouses. “I’ve seen robot bouquet making, I think it’s not quite there yet. So there’s a lot of work to continue to do across all three areas.” And then, on the technology side, we - like many companies that look like us from a distribution standpoint or an e-commerce standpoint - really saw the opportunity to build tech and tools to make the customer experience better, less friction filled - and the same thing for our employees. Infrastructure, we’re able to invest more in our Maryland facility and look at other facilities that can help us grow, become more profitable, add more options for our customers when they’re shopping with us. But when we say team, we saw a lot of roles that are going help us deliver a better customer experience, both digitally and physically. “Our latest round of funding, the investments are really going into team, infrastructure and technology - some into marketing as well.

#URBAN STEM ZIP#

Our amazing team is standing there at the ready to receive your order, place your bouquet in our very stylish box and zip it out via courier messenger to your loved one or friend or other recipient that you wanted to make their day today.”

And, from there, an order that you place on the website, for example, right now today in New York, would go from our dark store - which you’ve heard about in other industries, you can’t walk in there. And, from there, we redistribute that product to New York and DC - so you can tell how easy this is so far.

We then distribute them from Miami to our biggest facility in Maryland and then around the country to other facilities. They come in into Miami, which is the biggest port of entry into the U.S. Those are the two largest growing regions for flowers. “A lot of our flowers come from South America, mainly Ecuador and Colombia.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited for clarity.

Urban stem