World champion skier and former Olympian Lindsey Vonn is taking up a new cause as she settles into retirement by working to support young girls who are interested in pursuing STEM education.
According to PEOPLE, Vonn’s namesake foundation recently donated full scholarships to 22 girls to attend weeklong summer STEM classes with iD Tech.
“At tech companies, it’s a heavily male-dominated occupation and we really want to do things for girls and young kids where there’s a gap,” Vonn, 34, told the publication.
“I’ve always been passionate about my foundation and now that I’m retired I have — maybe not as much time as I had expected — but I still have more time now than I did before. And for me, I want to be involved in every camp.”
Vonn added she plans to be “personally involved” in helping the girls succeed in their studies.
The foundation will aim to help increase the number of women working in science and engineering. Currently, women only account for 29% of the workforce in those fields, according to statistics from the National Girls Collaborative Project.
Vonn told PEOPLE that meeting with some of the girls benefiting from her foundation has been an “amazing experience” and their areas of interest are a testament to how STEM is progressing.
“I mean, it’s literally night and day. When I grew up, the only technology that I had was one of those tall Mac computers and I was doing the Oregon Trail,” she said.
“Oregon Trail and Mario Teaches Typing. That was my childhood of tech, and so needless to say, it’s not the same as it was.”