Margaret (Meg) Käufer
Margaret (Meg) Käufer is an educator, community organizer and fundraiser. As President and founding member of The STEM Alliance, Meg brings her training and certifications in education to her work of promoting applied Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) initiatives. Her teaching career focused on inner city education, progressive education models, process-based reading and writing curriculum development as well as bilingual and second language acquisition models. Throughout her career, Meg has championed STEM learning for its capacity to engage all varieties of learners while inspiring the next generation of innovators, creative design specialists and entrepreneurs. Equally significant is Meg’s focus on equal access to quality learning experiences. STEM skills are associated with increased employability and higher wages. As such, providing access to STEM learning experiences is a matter of equity and opportunity. Highlights from her work include leadership of Co-Op Summer Enrichment, a summer program for low income children in Mamaroneck, NY. For the past four years, the STEM Alliance has innovatively refocused the Co-Op program to provide a blend of hands-on STEM enrichment experiences along with summer fun to over 250 children. She was also the driving force behind STEM-tastic, a hands-on festival of STEM learning that attracted 2,000 attendees in its inaugural year. Since its launch in 2013, the STEM Alliance has grown to serving over 4,000 annually across programs ranging from workforce development to robotics to Girls in STEM to programs for children as young as pre-school. Under Meg’s leadership, the STEM Alliance is now broadening its reach to address the urgent need to close the digital divide for those living in poverty. The STEM Alliance’s newest initiatives, Digital Equity Now and Virtual Mentoring, are being developed Westchester County-wide.
Meg holds a BA in Educational Studies from Brown University where she studied under education reformer, Dr. Ted Sizer, and an MA in Curriculum and Instruction with a certificate in administration from Teachers’ College at Columbia University.
Herself a bilingual parent (German-English) and mother of five children, Meg has lived and worked in Germany, Ecuador and France.