Armed with a love of science and math, Emily Cho '28 walked into her first prison at age 13.
She had learned that incarcerated people often don't have access to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, and she thought she could help by teaching them those subjects herself.
In 2019 she started tutoring adults in math at a federal prison more than an hour from her home in Northern New Jersey. After receiving an introduction to staff at a juvenile detention facility near her high school, she recruited a few friends to help. When local businesses and organizations asked if they could support the group, she formalized it and founded Juvie for STEM (JSTEM) as a nonprofit organization.
Seven years later, JSTEM has grown to a network of more than 7,000 active volunteers working in 36 facilities in the U.S. and abroad. For that work, the beauty brand L'Oréal Paris USA has named Cho a 2026 Women of Worth honoree, an annual award recognizing 10 female nonprofit leaders working to provide critical resources to vulnerable populations. The award comes with a $25,000 grant, as well as mentorship and national visibility for their organizations.
JSTEM provides hands-on courses in topics including coding, data analysis, astrophysics and collaborative robotics. It has also expanded into therapeutic services and reentry support to prepare incarcerated youth for life when they leave a detention center. To date, it has worked to give 20,000 teens in the juvenile detention system opportunities to unlock their potential through STEM education.
"There is so much overlooked talent in these spaces," Cho said. "I think we as a society tend to focus on a very particular group of people when it comes to innovation or creating the next big thing, but my question is, why are we ignoring such a massive population?"
Cho said the organization plans to use the grant to expand operations into Louisiana and to develop data software to measure impact and track students' trajectory after they participate in JSTEM programs.
Anna Shmarakova's son found a new path forward through a JSTEM workshop-style class at a juvenile detention center in Orange County, California. He learned coding and robotics, culminating in a project to build a small car that could avoid obstacles.
"Once he rejoined his high school, he had an extremely strong desire to go into the automobile industry and get into a top school," Shmarakova said. He is now a freshman at the University of California, Irvine, studying mechanical engineering.
"Emily is doing crucial work that could shape how juvenile corrections function both legislatively and internally," Shmarakova said. "It is astonishing to see that something that has been neglected by public officials and people five times her age can be so dramatically changed by a teenager."
Now an information sciences, systems and technology major in Cornell Bowers Computing and Information Science and Cornell Duffield College of Engineering, Cho is still seeking opportunities to bring her interest in engineering and math to bear where they are most needed. She has contributed to research projects tackling topics in medicine, psychology and the environment. Most recently, she has worked with the Social Dynamics Lab on a project that uses social survey data and graph-based information retrieval to simulate how media exposure shapes political attitudes. She has taken responsibility for developing the project's core simulation component.
Shiyu Ji, Ph.D. '26, originally asked Cho to contribute to the project, but after she quickly identified a new and better method to code the simulation, he invited her to co-lead.
"She's always looking for challenges to her technical ability," Ji said, "and she values her work's social impact in terms of if it can make things better for human society."
After she graduates from Cornell, Cho isn't sure what career she wants to pursue, but she knows she wants to continue finding ways to use her STEM skills to help others.
As for JSTEM, she hopes it becomes obsolete.
"The only reason that we exist and we are needed is because there is an educational disparity," she said. "My goal would be that we fix that problem and then we can shut it down."
