In 1994, as an associate professor in the department of chemistry at Merrimack College, Dr. Angeliki Diane Rigos began teaching a seminar on women in science.  She was a member of the Women’s Studies Steering Committee which founded the Women’s Studies Program at Merrimack and became its first director.

In 2019, Angeliki started to offer workshops on “Leading the Energy Transition” for students and postdocs at the annual U.S. C3E (Clean Energy Education & Empowerment) “Women in Clean Energy” Symposium, a gathering of professional women across the clean energy spectrum. 

At the same time, Angeliki co-founded the first leadership program for the Boston chapter of the Association for Women in Science (MASS AWIS).  The inaugural program, launched in January 2019, was designed for women in early- and mid-career stages and aimed to both build leadership skills and professional presence, and to create a strong network of program alumnae. By 2022, the fourth year of the program, ~100 AWIS members had participated in the Program.

Already in late 2018, Angeliki had been introduced to Prof. Anna Frebel of MIT’s physics department. Both women had been working to help women graduate students navigate their STEMM journeys through informal meetings and occasional workshops.

They recognized that foundational training of professional skills was not available to grad students, let alone postdocs at MIT, and elsewhere. It thus became clear that a formal program would be needed to reach more graduate students and postdocs, and to provide a structured, systematic, and more in-depth preparation for their careers.

Creating a partnership to join forces, in Spring 2020, the MIT LEAPS graduate courses (8.396 and 8.397) on LEAdership and Professional strategies and Skills were offered for the first time, with postdocs also invited to join.  A select group of postdocs were also chosen to learn the material alongside the regular participants but to also co-facilitate the classes with the instructors. This LEAPS postdoc cohort received mentoring and extra weekly training on the core concepts of each week and how to teach them. They were then able to co-teach/lead certain portions of selected classes, run group discussions and assist with personal work assessments.  Successful co-facilitators will be able to teach this class themselves once they become faculty/group leaders, in consultation with the MIT LEAPS program.  2022 marked the third year of the program with over 200 MIT graduate students and postdocs alumni.

Spurred by the successes of all these programs and connections that Angeliki had created, the next logical step for her was to create a non-profit company for increased reach. Epistimi was born in 2021.

“Epistimi” means science or knowledge in Greek which embodies the mission of Epistimi: to focus on empowering women in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Medicine) to better lead the world. Through a signature set of courses, workshops and individual mentorship, Epistimi now aims to develop STEMM women’s leadership competencies while they chart their leadership journey. 

Epistimi hopes to fill the great need for programs taught by women in STEMM to women in STEMM that provide leadership and career development training to early career scientists and engineers in academia, industry, and beyond.