A Math Magician

A weekly meal subscription inspired something far more impactful for Carnegie Mellon alumna Brittany Rhodes than a desire to cook.

Brittany’s now-husband introduced her to the meal delivery service while they were dating and, as a longtime math tutor, she realized that a math-focused subscription box could be a game changer for many of her students, especially Black girls who struggled with math anxiety.

The 2010 Tepper School of Business graduate founded Black Girl MATHgic in 2019 and launched the monthly subscription box service aimed at third through eighth-grade girls. Each box featured a successful Black woman in a math-based career, such as real estate, fashion or engineering. Also included in the box were a math activity workbook and at least one manipulative item the student could use to learn more about math in that career, affirmations to build their confidence and fun stickers.

The timing of the boxes was serendipitous. As the COVID-19 pandemic led schools to go virtual in 2020 quickly, parents were looking for additional support and the boxes were quickly in demand. With the abrupt shift in learning, a majority of children found themselves struggling academically, but BIPOC children suffered the most learning loss. Between 2019 and 2022, math test scores for Black and Hispanic fourth graders dropped by 7 points, according to a report from the Thurgood Marshall Institute, while white fourth graders’ math scores dropped by 3 points during the same time period.

The Solution to the Problem

As students settled back into traditional academic settings post-pandemic, Brittany and Black Girl MATHgic came to a crossroads. In late spring 2024, she shifted her business model from direct to consumer to business to business. The new sister brand, Math = Me, offers kits directly to schools, school districts, and learning programs or youth-serving organizations (like Girl Scouts, a customer of hers). Families will still be able to buy past boxes from Black Girl MATHgic’s online store.

“We need to reach [students] through their schools, through their districts, through their informal learning programs,” Brittany says. “That will not only allow us to grow in scale, but also to reach more children quicker and at a higher rate because at this point we really don’t have time to waste. We don’t have time for our children to not be able to participate in a STEM-focused world. We have AI now. We don’t want them to just be consuming AI, we want them to be creating AI. You can’t do that without a foundation in basic mathematics.”

2+2=4

Brittany, a Detroit native and the daughter of a retired school principal, remembers that math was always her favorite subject growing up, and she often tutored peers and younger students. It wasn’t until she got to Spelman College in Atlanta and switched to a math major that she encountered math that was hard for her. She had to retake a couple classes and took advantage of professors’ office hours and study groups in order to keep up.

When Brittany graduated she had trouble convincing employers that her math degree prepared her to contribute to their companies. A few “odd jobs” introduced her to data-driven marketing, and she found herself loving it.

She searched for a graduate business program that offered mathematical marketing and came across the Tepper School’s MBA program, which offered an analytical marketing track.

She emailed a Tepper student who had attended the same small high school she did and asked about her experience there. The young woman encouraged Brittany to visit Carnegie Mellon for the MBA Admissions Diversity Weekend, and as she says, “the rest is history.”

Brittany points to a public speaking class taught by Evelyn Pierce, emerita teaching professor of business management communication, that particularly prepared her to start Black Girl MATHgic. She was terrified of public speaking when she arrived in Pittsburgh, but Pierce required everyone to present up front and give both positive and negative feedback to each speaker at every class. As she improved and became less nervous, she started to seek out similar classes that improved her presenting skills. She credits those skills with allowing her to secure financial support and avoid relying on venture capital.

“Since I started my business in 2019, I have won almost a quarter of a million dollars in grants and pitch competitions,” she says. “With the pitch competitions, it’s you getting up in front of an audience and convincing the judges to give you funding. I would not be as comfortable as I am without the Tepper training ground.”

Coming Full Circle

Brittany says she still uses the marketing, entrepreneurship and accounting skills she learned at Tepper every day in her business. Her accounting skills came in handy last year when she caught some mistakes her bookkeeper had made. And her marketing skills have helped her build a new client base this year as she reaches out to principals and educational organization leaders.

One of her best marketing strategies, speaking to a captive audience at education conferences, uses all of her Tepper skills. On Aug. 7-9, she was part of the State of Black Learning conference in Pittsburgh. She applied to speak, researched who would attend and started reaching out to attendees who might be ideal clients before she arrived. Remembering what CMU professor Lloyd Corder taught about customer personas, she reviewed whether a principal headed a school in her ideal age group, whether they were in a rural or urban district, how many of their students get free or reduced lunches, what their math scores were over the past few years, what their spend per pupil rates were and what other supplementary programs they might already be using.

Brittany is thrilled the skills she learned at Tepper have been so practical for her business. Young people who are excited about science and technology careers but don’t have a good foundation in math often choose to instead study economics or English in high school, she says. She hopes to show them that they can become mathematicians.

“When you’re young it may feel like, ‘When am I going to use this? I don’t need this,’” she says. “I literally have a math degree and a business degree, and I have a business focused on helping kids with math. If you had told me that when I was at Spelman or Carnegie Mellon, I would have been like, ‘I don’t believe that!’ It’s like a full circle moment.”