O U R M I S S I O N
We’re helping more women develop kick-ass electronics skills
We aim to shatter the stereotype that hobby electronics are boring, and only for brainiac born-nerds. Our gadgets are funny, feminist, sometimes a bit subversive, and a few are definitely NSFW. We know that anyone with a creative spark can learn basic electronics. Because it’s hard to imagine what a bunch of parts can become when you've never worked with them before, we’re making finished hobby "projects" that you can immediately engage with, learn about, and start taking apart and modifying.
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On a more serious note, women are especially underrepresented in the technical electronics industry (fewer than 10% of electrical engineers are women), and we at Alpenglow Industries aim to be a force of change. We’re adamantly against business models that target women by doubling-down on stereotypes of what women are “supposed” to be interested in - i.e. the shrink it and pink it movement or the three things I hate most are math socks (only available in women’s sizes of course). We promote women by being a company of women creators ourselves and making what speaks to us; highlighting the accomplishments of our female tech leaders, mentors, and friends; teaching concepts in plain language without judgement, and teaching technical jargon instead of lording it over everyone; and reaching out to communities that are already predominantly women (ex: knitting and textiles), while creating electronics gadgets relevant to their existing interests.
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G A D G E T S Y O U S A Y ?What kind of gadgets?
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A B O U T U S
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Our founder, Carrie Sundra, is a lifelong learner with a penchant for the ridiculous. She went to Harvey Mudd College, where she proudly scored a 19 on her first electrical engineering exam, and subsequently chose to pursue more mechanical and manufacturing courses. But shortly after starting her first job after college, some project funding got scrambled and they needed a body to solder and do some sensor research for a 6” micro air vehicle (and this was in 1999 folks, this stuff didn’t exist yet). Suddenly, faced with a super cool application and concrete “thing” to build and make work, electronics got a lot more interesting. Ever since, she’s designed custom PCBs and helped develop products for a variety of applications - from avionics for small UAVs that are now in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, to livestock thermometers, to waterproof power scrubbers, to her own yarn-winding and twisting devices.
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Carrie lives in San Luis Obispo, a coastal California town conveniently located between San Francisco and Los Angeles, which is home to Cal Poly University and a burgeoning tech community. She climbs, snowboards, knits, makes stuff, helps promote the Softec Women in Tech group, and teaches soldering to anyone who wants to learn.