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Girls Talk Tech is a ConocoPhillips STEM outreach program, formalized in 2018 by women in the company’s IT organization, that aims to educate, encourage, and empower young women to consider technology careers. According to a September 28, 2026 CIO interview with program co-sponsor Billy-Joe Lafortune, it has reached more than 7,000 girls over nine years. It is free to participants, and it reaches students through three levels of engagement: school panels, short on-campus events, and summer cohorts. The reported reach is a useful picture of the program’s scale, but it does not by itself show what the program achieves for individual students.
What Girls Talk Tech is and who runs it
The program is run by employee volunteers from ConocoPhillips’s IT organization. Lafortune is identified in the interview as general manager of Lower 48 Digital Technologies and Global Strategy at ConocoPhillips and a Girls Talk Tech co-sponsor. She describes it simply: “It’s really an outreach education program.” She also frames its purpose in terms of pipeline and access. In her words, the program is “about reaching out to young women in middle school and high school, and it’s about inspiring them and preparing them to consider or pursue a career in technology and STEM,” and it “helps build the pipeline of talent needed for an AI-driven economy.”
The three levels of engagement
The interview describes three distinct formats. They differ mainly in how deep the exposure is and how much time a student gives to it.
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| Level | Format as described | Typical length | What students get |
|---|---|---|---|
| School panels | Employee volunteers visit schools | Not stated in the interview | Career journeys, STEM pathways, and answers to questions about college and technology work |
| Short on-campus events | Hosted on ConocoPhillips campuses | Typically one or two days | Hands-on technology activities, breakout sessions, and conversations with practitioners in areas such as cybersecurity and software development |
| Summer programs | Small cohort | About one week | Mentorship, real-world projects, and a capstone presentation to the business |
The panel format is the broadest and reaches the most students with the least commitment. The summer cohort is the narrowest and gives the closest contact with practitioners and real work. The interview does not say how many students each format serves, so the table shows the shape of the offerings rather than their relative size.
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Reach, affiliates, and volunteers
CIO reports that the program has reached more than 7,000 girls over nine years. Those counts, along with the figures below, come from the 2026 interview. The article does not explain how they were counted or whether they have been independently checked, so treat them as the program’s own reported numbers.
- Established affiliate programs: three, in Houston, Bartlesville, and Calgary.
- Pilots: two, in Midland and Equatorial Guinea.
- Global committee: more than 20 members.
- Volunteers: more than 150.
Houston’s two-day GTT Fest is the largest single event described, reportedly drawing close to 200 students.
Cost and how students take part
CIO says all offerings are free to participants. The interview does not describe an application process, eligibility rules, age-specific requirements beyond the middle and high school focus, or a sign-up route. Families and schools who want to find out whether a panel, event, or summer cohort is available locally should contact ConocoPhillips or the local affiliate directly. The article does not name a central contact or a public registration page, and availability outside the established affiliate locations is not stated.
What the reported outcomes can and cannot show
The interview includes one participant’s story, which is a useful illustration of what the program can look like in practice. Maddie attended Girls Talk Tech events as a high school student, later earned a technology degree, joined a ConocoPhillips rotation program, and became a cybersecurity analyst and a Girls Talk Tech committee member. Her path shows how a student might move from a school event into a technology career and back into the program as a volunteer.
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It does not, however, establish that the program caused her outcome. The article gives no participant cohort study, no comparison group, and no figures on how many participants go on to study STEM or work in technology. The 7,000-plus reach figure is a count of exposure, not a measure of effectiveness. Taken together, the reach figures and one career story support a description of the program’s activity and reach. They do not support a claim about its impact on students as a group.
Reading the representation statistic
The interview cites the National Center for Women & IT for this statement: “According to the National Center for Women & IT, women make up 57% of the U. professional workforce and hold only 26% of IT roles.” The phrase “U. professional workforce” appears to have lost a word in the article, and it is best read as the U.S. professional workforce. The article does not name the underlying report or give its publication year. These figures should be treated as undated. If you need to cite them, locate the original National Center for Women & Information Technology publication and use the year it states.
What the program’s leaders say it is for
The interview also gives the program’s broader case in Lafortune’s words. She argues that “the future will be shaped by who shows up” and that “programs like this help ensure who gets into the room, and whose voices are heard.” These statements describe the program’s intent and its view of representation. They are a sponsor’s framing, not evidence about outcomes. The interview also poses two questions that frame leadership in the program: “What leading something like this does for you” and “If someone in your industry were asked tomorrow what you are known for beyond your own company, what would they say?”
Bottom line for readers
Girls Talk Tech is a free, volunteer-run ConocoPhillips outreach program with three levels of exposure, three established affiliates, two pilots, and a reported reach of more than 7,000 girls over nine years. Those figures come from a 2026 CIO interview and have not been independently verified. The program is best understood as a broad outreach effort with depth that ranges from a single school panel to a week-long summer cohort. Its impact on individual students has not been established in the reporting, and the representation statistic it cites should be checked against its original, currently dated source.
Source: CIO, Michael Bertha, “Girls Talk Tech: 7,000 students and the next generation of women tech leaders,” September 28, 2026.
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