Pearl

Inspiration

Many young girls interested in STEM lack access to female role models and mentors. They struggle to navigate career paths and build the necessary networks.

Pearl bridges the gap between aspiring girls and accomplished women in STEM. Our app matches mentees with mentors based on their interests and career goals, offering personalized guidance and fostering a supportive community.

We're helping girls build confidence, explore career paths, and ultimately, achieve their full potential in STEM fields.

What it does

Bridges the Gap: It addresses the lack of female role models and mentors for young girls interested in STEM.

Connects Mentees and Mentors: It matches aspiring girls with accomplished women in STEM.

Provides Personalized Guidance: It offers guidance tailored to the mentee's interests and career goals

Empowers Girls: It helps girls build confidence and explore career paths. It helps girls achieve their full potential in STEM.

How we built it

We built Pearl as a responsive web app using Vue 3 with Vite, styled with Tailwind CSS, and powered by Firebase for user authentication and real-time database storage. We integrated Google's Gemini API to personalize mentor matching and message generation using natural language prompts.

Challenges we ran into

We spent a long time coming up and workshopping the idea. Some technical challenges included managing user state between authenticated mentees and mentors, dynamically using Firestore data in AI prompts, and formatting Gemini API responses reliably.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud to have built a platform that not only connects young women with mentors in STEM, but also uses AI in a meaningful, empowering way. We successfully integrated Gemini to personalize mentorship matches and generate authentic outreach messages something many mentees may feel nervous about writing on their own.

We’re also proud of how we designed Pearl to be user-friendly, inclusive, and role model–focused, reflecting the voices and goals of girls aged 12–19. From navigating real-time Firestore data to crafting clean, responsive UI with Tailwind, every piece was built with intention — and love

What we learned

Throughout building Pearl, we learned how to effectively integrate AI with real user data to create personalized and meaningful experiences. We gained hands-on experience using Gemini for prompt engineering, working with Firestore to structure mentor/mentee relationships, and building responsive UIs with Tailwind.

We also learned the importance of the collaboration between software dev and UI/UX and translating between each filed to communicate effectively.

What's next for Pearl

Favourite feature as well as a sign up page for for mentors, as it is only the mentee side right now. There is also potential for a community hub and question area. For example, resume review.