Women in STEM (WiSTEM) Staff

Pooja Desai (She/Her)

Director

Pooja Desai is our new Director of the Women in STEM (WiSTEM) program! With over 15 years of global industry experience across Oil & Gas, Technology, and Consulting, Pooja brings a wealth of strategic and results-driven operations leadership to the team. Her career has spanned many different industries and functions: from process engineering at ConocoPhillips to mergers & acquisitions, deal strategy, and integration at Google Cloud.

She is a proud “Double Longhorn” with both a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Texas at Austin. Back in undergrad, Pooja was also a Girl Day volunteer and participated in several of the WiSTEM events on campus. In her own words, “the support I received from these programs while at UT have had an immeasurable impact to my life and career to this day, and I am so excited to pay it forward for the next generation of STEM students and leaders on campus.”

When not on campus, Pooja enjoys spending time with her family (“my life goal is to be the coolest aunt for my nieces and nephews”), hiking, reading, and trying new crafty hobbies. She loves to travel and recently achieved a life goal: visiting all 7 continents!

Claire Lewis (She/Her)

Student Program Coordinator

Claire is the Student Program Coordinator with the Women in STEM (WiSTEM) program at UT Austin. She supports WiSTEM’s University-wide outreach, recruitment, and retention programs for undergraduate STEM students. Claire earned her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Texas State University and earned her master’s degree in Education Leadership and Policy from UT Austin. Claire started her career working for the Federal TRIO Programs, first as an intern in the Upward Bound Program and later as a full-time Pre-College Advisor in the Educational Talent Search Program. During her time with the TRIO programs, she worked closely with high school students, helping them on their journeys to college and beyond. Before joining the WiSTEM team, Claire served as an Associate Academic Advisor in the College of Natural Sciences at UT Austin. In this position, she worked with a caseload of CNS students and assisted them with their academic and career planning.

In addition to her role at WiSTEM, Claire is the Scholarship Director for the Sandoval-Cordova Foundation, a nonprofit that provides college scholarships to high school students in South Texas.

Claire is also an alumna of the Disney College Program, where she made magic at Walt Disney World in Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

Claire is the proud pet mom to her dog, Henry, and cat, Hera. She enjoys crocheting, traveling, camping, hiking, cooking, baking, painting, musicals, and of course… all things Disney.

Ally Ameel (She/Her)

Outreach Program Coordinator

Ally Ameel, born and raised in Austin, Texas, has grown up on UT Austin’s campus and has seen the university’s wide-reaching impact on the community and the city at large. She’s very excited to have the opportunity to work at UT Austin and looks forward to being involved in CEO Summer Camps and the famous STEM Girl Day as WiSTEM’s Outreach Program Coordinator.

Ally attended Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, and graduated in May of 2021 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering. Throughout college and after graduation, she has embraced her lifelong passion for STEM education, outreach, and making connections with students and youth through various volunteer and paid positions, most notably as an Instructor for iD Tech Camps hosted at UT Austin, as an academic tutor and coach at Austin Learning Center in the Westlake area, and as the Program Director for National Student Leadership Conference’s high school summer engineering program hosted at Yale University. Being WiSTEM’s Outreach Program Coordinator is a perfect next step and a dream come true.

Outside of her job, you may find her writing poetry, watching movies, reading books, attending live music performances, spending time with family and friends, and exploring the city she calls home.