The STEM Exodus Is Real. Here’s What It’s Telling Us About Culture, Belonging, and Leadership.
by Leesa Hill, Partner, Team Effectiveness & Head of DEIB
By the age of 30, 68% of women with STEM degrees have already left the field.
It’s a statistic that stops you in your tracks and one that Andrea Mohamed, COO and co-founder of QuantumBloom, doesn’t just cite in her recent appearance on The Future of Teamwork podcast, she brings it to life.
Andrea’s work focuses on early-career women in STEM. But her insights go well beyond recruitment or retention strategy. What she makes clear is this:
The workplace isn’t losing women because they lack ambition or capability. It’s losing them because the systems they enter were never designed with them in mind.
Not a Pipeline Problem
For years, the DEIB conversation around women in STEM has focused heavily on “the pipeline.” How do we get more girls interested in science? How do we close the education gap?
Here’s the thing: we did.
Women have been outpacing men in earning bachelor’s degrees for four decades. And yet, the higher women climb in STEM careers, the more likely they are to leave.
Andrea describes this as a kind of “cheese grater effect,” where the culture slowly erodes confidence, ambition, and belonging, often without anyone noticing until it’s too late.
The Real Cost of Inhospitable Culture
Women are entering technical fields with credentials, drive, and deep expertise, but they’re landing in environments that still rely on outdated hierarchies, exclusionary norms, and managers unequipped to lead diverse teams.
The result?
- Loss of innovation
- Costly turnover
- Shallow talent pipelines at the very moment companies need to grow
- And teams missing the voices of those building the future for everyone, not just a privileged few
These aren’t just HR problems. They’re business problems.
Systems, Not Just People, Need Support
What stood out most in this episode is how Andrea’s team at QuantumBloom approaches the challenge. Rather than focusing solely on the women themselves, they build ecosystems of support that include:
- Coaching for early-career women and their managers
- Cohort-based learning to foster community and shared language
- Mentorship inside the company to connect ambition with opportunity
It’s a bottom-up approach that acknowledges a hard truth:
we can’t expect individuals to thrive in systems that weren’t built for them, and haven’t evolved to include them.
A Generational Shift Is Already Underway
One of the most hopeful takeaways from Andrea’s conversation with host Dane Groeneveld is the power of this next generation.
Unlike previous cohorts, Gen Z isn’t waiting for permission to challenge the system. They’re walking away faster, speaking up louder, and demanding alignment between company values and behavior.
They’re not being difficult.
They’re being honest.
And that honesty is giving companies a choice: evolve or lose the very talent they claim to value.
Final Thought
If your talent strategy is still focused on attraction alone, it’s time to zoom out.
Belonging is what keeps people in the room.
Mattering is what keeps them engaged.
And systems, not slogans, are what need the real work.
Listen to Andrea’s full episode on The Future of Teamwork here.
If you’re rethinking how your organization approaches inclusion and belonging—or want to compare notes on what’s working—feel free to reach out. I’d love to hear what you’re seeing.
