Dr. Whitney: Hello everybody and welcome back. It's Dr. Whitney, here at the Modern Mommy Doc Podcast. I am here today with Aubre Andrus, who is the author of the Look Up series, an entire series of books for kids that talk about real women in STEAM. And so I'm excited about this podcast interview today, because as we all know, as women in the workplace, we've come so far over the past couple of decades, but also there's so far to go--particularly for our daughters as we think about how to encourage them. So, Aubre, welcome. Thank you for being here today.

Aubre: Thank you so much for having me so excited to start this conversation.

Dr. Whitney: So tell me Aubre about your story and then also tell me about your inspiration for writing this book series and a little bit more about what the series is.

Aubre: So my background is in journalism and I went on to become a children's book author, and I worked for various different publishers. My inspiration for the series really came from so many things that happened over the past few years with COVID and just rethinking your life and your career. And I also happened to have a daughter during that time. So when I was a kid, 99% of the women in my life were moms or teachers, and that's wonderful. I love them, but I really would have loved to have some more female role models in the workplace. 

And I do feel like that was a little limiting on my career choices. For example, when I was like 10, I really became obsessed with what I was going to do one day. And I was really into Disney Imagineering, like the people who design the theme parks. I just was so into this. And there was nothing for kids about this, but I got an adult nonfiction book and tried to read all about it. 

I tried reading this stuff with a bunch of dudes who were engineers and inside were pictures of them. And nothing really came of that. I did not end up as an engineer and my dad literally majored in engineering and these dots were not connected for me, you know? 

But I loved Judy Blume and I loved reading and writing. And she loved dancing, I loved dancing. She had brown hair, I had brown hair. She was Jewish. My best friend was Jewish. You know, I had all these things where I saw myself in her. And I grew up one day, to become a children's book author.

And I don't think that was a coincidence, you know? That I had that kind of role models that I looked up to. So I just found myself thinking about this when I had a daughter and I got kind of sensitive. Because after you have a baby you're shoved into this super-duper gender stereotype without even trying. You're just suddenly breastfeeding on the couch and at home and not working. And you're like, "What has my life become?" So I was just super sensitive to how I could show her strong female role models. And she was literally a baby, but I was just stressing out about this. 

So I made sure I got a female pediatrician. I got a female dentist for her. Our hairdresser is a guy. I just started looking for all these ways, trying to think, "What's an idea that helps to balance this out?" So sort of with that combined with all these women dropping out of the workforce during COVID, the wheels started turning in my head about some type of book series I could write for girls because I had been really into American Girl Magazine as a kid. And I knew that they took girlhood seriously and taught me how to be a better friend and be good in school and I actually went on to work at American Girl Magazine. So I had this background writing empowering content for girls and I had this recent experience freelancing for publishers writing a lot of STEM books, because that's obviously a hot topic in children's publishing.

And I was like, "What if I combined these two things?" You know, I had such a good experience as a kid with American Girl and their advice and activity books and their magazine, I thought, "Why couldn't they have taught me engineering too or science?" And so I smashed those two things together. It was my way of fighting back for all these women who dropped out of the workforce and the plight of working parents. It was just so frustrating to see. 

And I know not every woman can work at this time because of childcare situations and school situations. And so I'm like, "How are we gonna show these role models to our kids?" So that's kind of the long story of the many things that were the wheels that were turning in my head about how to get something into the hands of girls that could really show them some empowering women and female career role models. It's basically the book I wish I had when I was a kid.

Dr. Whitney: Yeah, for sure. And talk about what's happening in the workforce right now and with women in STEAM careers. I'm sure so many women who are listening are familiar, but let's just break it down as to what actually is happening for women over the past couple of years.

Aubre: Yeah. I mean, the statistics are just crazy when you look at them. Women are half of college educated people and yet are still about a quarter of the STEM workforce. And even that number is kind of inflated because women are super heavily in health care and more roles where you're taking care of other people. And yet in engineering, it's literally 13%, you know? So these numbers are truly astounding when you look into that. Because my background is journalism, I'm always looking for the stories to tell and the problems to solve and things that need bringing attention to. So once I really started doing research and just really looking into this, I was like, "Oh my God. I have to write this book series." So, it had to be done.

And, there's other issues too. 67% of the STEM workforce is white. And, there's so much room for growth and for women and for people of color. And that is a huge issue right now that needs to be addressed. And we need to get girls involved in STEM earlier. There was a super interesting study I saw that basically looked at seven year olds through 17 year olds and they kind of had the exact same career aspirations. So think about when you're seven and you're like, "I'm going to be an athlete. I'm going to be a teacher." And then 17 year olds still had those same answers because they're not exposed to other careers. 

According to this study, they just drew inspiration from their family, which in my case was almost all teachers, or from the media, (which, as we know, is super gender biased). So when you really start taking inventory of what your kid is exposed to and what gender roles they're exposed to, it's kind of alarming. We really need to go out of our way to show them more strong working women.

Dr. Whitney: And you're absolutely right about childcare being a huge piece of this in terms of moms backing out of the workforce and it really highlighting that idea that we do carry the mental load and the ultimate responsibilities for our family still, even though we shouldn't. So this morning, we were talking before we started recording that my nanny called out sick today. I have, with my Modern Mommy Doc job, some more flexibility because I can push things a little bit. And I chose this work because I love that flexibility. And at the same time, there was no question this morning about who was going to be the one that took over taking the kids to school. It was a hundred percent me.

Aubre: Oh, of course. Yeah. And the statistic is 2.3 million women left the workforce in 2020. Hello! That number is mind-boggling. I have two friends that did as well and it was the childcare situations. And it's just crazy when you really look at the numbers. And we saw we've come so far, but yet we're still not even close to where we need to be.

Dr. Whitney: Yeah. I love this idea of basically creating content that allows young women and especially women of color to see an older version of themselves reflected back. So I know that in your series you have some people of color that are here in these STEAM position roles on purpose. And I'm always trying to expose my kids to that too. Have you listened at all to the Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls? Your daughter might be a little young for it.

The book is great, but I actually love even more the podcast series. They have an entire series that talks about diversity in terms of sexual orientation, that talks about diversity of people of color, in terms of women who are in STEAM positions. And I heard my daughter the other day--I almost broke down in front of her, but I was trying to keep it together to normalize it--This is horrible. First of all, she's listening to one that's about a lesbian couple and she goes, "Oh yeah. That's, that's where a woman is romantically interested in another woman, mom." And she was listening to one that is about a woman who had autism or was on the spectrum and was misunderstood, but was this amazing artist. And she goes, "That's just like me. People didn't understand her, but she was different. And she found her own path and she followed her dream. And even though she was different than other people, she was able to make a huge difference in the world." YES!

And then she was listening to one about an engineer! I really think the work that you're doing on these books is so vital because it really is about reflecting back to young girls. This is possible for you because you can see yourself in the images and then the descriptions.

Aubre: Yeah. In children's publishing, they literally call it "window and ears stories." So you're either seeing a window into somebody else's life experience. Or you're seeing a mirror, like a true reflection of yourself, you know? I'd like to give girls both of those opportunities-- to see themselves or see someone maybe they're not used to seeing in one of these positions.

Dr. Whitney: Yeah. Tell me more about the books themselves, what are the different types of positions that you highlighted, and how you came about developing the actual content and what you made sure to include in it.

Aubre: Yeah. So I wanted to pick careers that were STEM focused. I did expand it to STEAM because creativity and art are such key components of all of these careers. And I was a creative kid who kind of assumed that because I was creative, I couldn't be scientific or good at math. So that was important to include that as well. But I wanted to pick careers that would really jump out at the kids, that they could be really, really excited about. Because another important part of this series is that I'd love to teach kids that you can be really excited and passionate about your career. You don't have to hate it. I grew up seeing a lot of people, a lot of adults, who hated their jobs.

I wanted to also encourage kids to really find their passion and pursue it. The first book is about a toy engineer. She's a mechanical engineer who works at a toy company. Technically toy engineer is not a job, but we simplified that. I've got a video game developer. I have an ice cream scientist. She's a food scientist who wrote her thesis on ice cream and she got her PhD. And I also have a beauty chemist, which would be a cosmetic chemist. She developed lotions and bubble baths and bath bombs and all that kind of good stuff. And then I have a theme park designer, which was kind of my dream. And so it was really important for me to reach out to somebody who had that job. Cause I know that's the true book, the literal book I wish I had had when I was a kid. So that's what we're starting with right now. There's so many more careers I would love to look into. I want to get someone in aerospace and shark scientists. There's just so many cool careers out there for kids.

Dr. Whitney: It's interesting on the beauty chemist. I'm thinking about how, if we'd written a book for boys, they probably wouldn't have done like a beauty chemist one, you know what I mean? But I'm thinking about the idea of how I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. The idea that already as a society, we are teaching young girls from a pretty early age to think, "Oh, this sparkly top and this fun makeup." I mean, I do that with my kids, too. My kids love painting their nails and having a spa day and whatever. I think about it almost as if my kids liked strawberries and I was giving them a fruit that's similar to it that they haven't had before. I like the idea of maybe taking what society is already promoting for our kids and tweaking it to make it more science or more STEAM focused and then expanding with the series as you move on. Was that kind of the thought?

Aubre: Yeah, it was kind of two-fold. It was that. And also, I was concerned about that career too. I was like, "Do I go there or not?" Because the cover is pink. It is a beauty chemist, you know? And she's unapologetically, super feminine and beautiful and strong and amazing. And I was just like, "Yes, this is amazing." You know, you can be in tennis and you can be super beautiful and smart and into makeup and into dancing. I didn't want to downplay being a woman and what that might mean. There's many different ways to be a woman.

Dr. Whitney: Yeah, I really appreciate that because I think that is true. I mean, you guys can see my background, right? I love the anthropology vibe that's light and airy and my favorite color is pink, right? And I still consider myself a very strong bad-ass woman, you know what I mean? So it can come in all flavors.

Aubre: Yeah, so that was important to me. And it was also important to me to do narrative nonfiction, which combined the best elements of fiction with nonfiction. So I'm telling a true story, but it's written in a chapter book format with characters and settings and it's a little bit more gripping than the dense, STEM books. I had been asked to write for certain publishers what they called "browsable nonfiction," that are just packed with information and facts. You can flip to any page and maybe you'll learn something, but you're not really reading it cover to cover. But I really wanted to show the true story arc of "Here's what this woman does. Here's what she was like as a kid." So as a kid yourself, as the reader, you could kind of identify with her. You know the college she went to. Here's what she majored in. Here's what college is. Here's what a major is. This is what a job means, why you have a job. So it was really important to me to really break that down. 

I don't think we talk about career stuff enough for kids. And then I have a section that's a little bit more journaling focused in the back for each book. So in the video game book, you're going to design your own video game. In the toy engineer book, you're going to start mapping out your own toy idea. But then there's also a true journaling part that was why we look up to this woman. And then tell me how you're already like her. So we think Amanda is super strong. Well, tell me about a time when you felt really strong. I just really liked that too. Because I'm sure these books could feel a little bit overwhelming. Like, "Wow, this woman has done so much. And how do I even start?" But I just want to show girls you're already on your way there, you know?

Dr. Whitney: Yeah. You're making it approachable. It's not something that's far out in outer space. It's something that could happen for them too.

Aubre: Yeah. You want it to be aspirational, but still friendly.

Dr. Whitney: I want to dig into the idea you were talking about people hating their jobs and about adults that you saw who hated their jobs. Because I had that experience too. And I think it came from this boomer generation of grit focused work. You have a job, you do it, it doesn't really matter if you like it or not. You need to keep on going because you need to put food on the table. And having a steady retirement and having steady income is the most important thing. You can live later. Live when you're 70.

Aubre: Yeah.

Dr. Whitney: I feel like we've made a paradigm shift that's happening for this generation of working moms. We had a really interesting interview with Katie Ceccarini. She's going to be on the show in a month or so. We actually did a live event with our Modern Mama's Club. And she came on and we did a live event and we're making it into a podcast episode because it was so good. Because she talked about this idea of, even if something is a strength of yours, even if you're good at something, even if something is a natural fit of yours, if it's an energy depleter versus something that gives you energy, it's still okay for that not to be the right fit for you career wise.

Aubre: Totally, totally. I love that. And that's something that people are really focusing more on teaching children too. It's the idea that you can always get better at something. Just because you flunked the math tests in third grade doesn't mean you can't be a mathematician. For example, in the beauty chemist book, she actually is a super genius and went to college when she was 16, but she totally failed when she got there and literally got an F in chemistry. But she still went on to be a chemist. So I liked the idea that you don't have to choose things just because you're good at it. You can always get better at something else.

I also think it's super important, at least it was important to me, to show the importance of being passionate about your career. Because of all the struggles that working women have, whether you decide to have kids or not, you clearly have more hurdles to overcome in the workplace. So especially if you choose to have a child, if you can come back to a career that you're super passionate about, that'll be so much easier, right? I felt so lucky when I was on maternity leave that I was excited to go back to work and super passionate about what I do. And I thought of a lot of people I know and thought, "Wow, that must be really hard for them to go back to that whole office job that they clearly don't really like," you know? So I just think, isn't that the best situation: if you're super passionate and excited about your career, and you love going to work. Why wouldn't we try to teach kids to follow passion? And so that was just super important to me.

Dr. Whitney: Well, it sounds like what you're talking about is that in your work, obviously, you find purpose. You find fulfillment and satisfaction from the work that you're doing. And so if you do have a failure or a setback or things don't go your way, you're able to push through. You know that I've written the Working Mom Blueprint and The New Baby Blueprint with the American Academy of Pediatrics. And for sure there's moments where I'm sitting there editing something from my editor or working on something for my editor, thinking, "I hate this." But the drive of "I care about this work so much" makes it so that those tough moments, those little parts of the job that are not my favorite part to do, are much easier, because I can see the bigger picture and the purpose behind it.

Aubre: For sure. Absolutely. And it also, for me at least, helps with the mom guilt that we inevitably have. So I know I'm doing what I love and I'm super inspired by it and energized by it. So it's good for me. So I'm working and setting a great example for my daughters.

Dr. Whitney: Well, I'd love for people to hear personally for you, for those who are interested in writing or interested in finding passion projects that are about things they really care about, either women in STEAM or women in other subjects or doing kind of their passion project. You obviously work from home, but how does it work for you for this series? Because I know you've written for, like you said, American Girl. You've written some other books. When you have an idea, are you pitching it via an agent to different publishers? Do you have a publisher that you work with 99.9% of the time? How does that work? So that way we can give a little bit of practical insider tips for people.

Aubre: Yeah. If anyone is interested in writing, there's quite a few different ways to go about it. But the super traditional way is to come up with an idea, write the idea, get an agent, and they pitch it to a publisher. It's a very long process. If it's just a side passion project, that might be fine for you. But for me, this is my career and how I pay my mortgage. So I did a ton of networking directly with editors and publishers. And, I do a lot of work for hire. So especially these days, publishers are coming up with what their needs are in-house, based on sales stats and marketing and whatever. And then they just need a writer or to execute the vision. So I'm asked to do a lot of various different projects based on their needs.

And that's been a decade of networking to get into that. So that's a little non-traditional way to go about it. But if you're truly looking to be a full-time author, that's kind of the only way in my opinion to do it, unless they're going to go write Harry Potter, you know? I've worked with tons of big publishers, like Scholastic and National Geographic Kids. I decided for this series to start my own publishing company and publish them myself, because I just had a very specific vision for this series. And I wanted to make sure I featured women of color. So it's a unique format, how it's narrative non-fiction with the journaling, with activities and, it's something that I think some publishers would've been like, "Oh, well that will sit on the shelf. How are we going to market this?"

So basically I started my own publishing company and doing print on demand and selling it myself on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Target and various other online outlets. That's another thing you can do: the indie publishing world--which used to be called self publishing--is growing and there's crazy, amazing technology and resources to help you execute these projects and make them. I would recommend that you definitely have some experience in the industry before going this route. I'm super pumped about it to be doing it on my own. And I like that when someone buys these books, they're supporting a small female-owned business as opposed to like a big New York city publisher. So that's cool. Yeah.

Dr. Whitney: Well, I think what you said is important because it highlights this dichotomy that we wanna teach our girls to dream. We want to teach our girls that they can be anything that they want to be. And also we need to still teach our kids that it takes hard work. We have to still be real about the fact that like, sometimes there are "grind-it-out" nights and days. You have to make your own personal investment to make it happen. Or you have to self-publish the book either by choice on your own for the long-term or in the short term before a big publisher takes it on. And so I actually think, you're a great example of exactly what we want our girls and our boys to be learning, which is, there is this happy medium between grit and dreaming between grit and aspiration.

Aubre: Yeah. But that's also another inspiration I had for wanting to write this series. I get, as a Children's book author, asked to speak in classrooms a lot. And the Q and A session always turns into, "What's it like to be an author?" And I think kids are really into that. And I started to honestly feel like I was painting a false picture or something. Because I was like, "I sit at my desk, all day by myself writing, and grinding it out and just going from project to project. It's really hard to make a living as a full-time author. And so I didn't like that. I want to tell these kids about other careers. Why aren't we? And that was another epiphany. Why aren't doctors coming into the school? Why aren't scientists coming into these schools? I just felt weird. I don't think children's book authors are the number one career we should be teaching our kids to pursue.

And there's also like a need in the workplace for STEM careers. We also should be telling our kids about these jobs that we actually, as a society, really need to fulfill and that are really important. So yeah. So I like now that I can talk a little bit about being an author, but then I can also say, "Hey, look at these high paying amazing jobs and they bring you lots of happiness."

Dr. Whitney: Although, I will say as a doctor, it's funny because I get asked to do speeches in schools too, about what it's like to be a doctor. And I feel like I'm actually with you in that same boat and being like, "Actually, the higher paying job would be to go be an engineer. The higher paying job would be to be in advertising. This is a bad investment. Unless you're going to be a plastic surgeon, you really shouldn't do this.” You know what I mean? So, I think that's the whole thing with these STEAM careers is that they actually are outside of healthcare--which health care is important. It's good. I'm glad that I can help people and kids and it's fulfilling, but it's actually not the job that for women is going the most financially successful for them. Some of these other jobs, the scientist for the cosmetic company, the toy engineer, the person who's doing the amusement park engineering. Those are actually going to be the ones that we really want these young girls to also feel like they can have a part of. So I just love the work that you're doing in this series.

Aubre: Yay. Thank you.

Dr. Whitney: Well, thank you so much for being here Aubre. I just think that people are going to be encouraged. Can you tell people again, what the title of the book series is and then also where they can find it and check it out for their kids. And then also I want you to give an age range for what these books are meant for. Because when I looked at them, they felt very specific to a certain age group. Who would enjoy the books the most?

Aubre: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I have a lot of experience working for American Girl and that eight to 12 year old range, who are called middle grade publishing. That's my core audience: eight to 12 year old girls for this book series. But boys will love this too. It was important to me that it's really targeted to girls for all the reasons we've talked about. But yeah, it's called the Lookup Series. You can go to thelookupseries.com and see links to each of the books. The first two books are called "Amanda: Toy Engineer" and "Zi: Video Game Developer." "Dr. Maya: Ice Cream Scientist" is coming out very soon and you can find them on Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com, target.com. But if you go to thelookupseries.com, you'll see the link to purchase it.

Dr. Whitney: Awesome, thanks!