A room of students sit at a table coding. One of the students knows what she wants to do when she grows up.

“I love coding because when I get older I would like to make my own business,” fourth grader Teylor Kelley said.

Kelley is in the S.T.E.A.M. Champs program in Downtown Brooklyn. The classes and camps teach kids ages 5 to12 about science, technology, engineering, the arts and math. It opened over the summer with help from former New York Liberty basketball star Niesha Butler.

“I do run my program like a gym. It is all I know, so in addition to kids learning STEM skills, they have to practice teamwork, leadership and multitasking,” Butler said.

Butler studied engineering while she played basketball at Georgia Tech. She added “arts” to “STEM” for this program to create the acronym S.T.E.A.M. because she says kids need to understand the options they have when choosing a career.

“I think it is we have an opportunity to connect kids who are normally interested in art and maybe normally interested in athletics to give them ten technical skills so that they can revolutionize their area of interest,” Butler said. “We use different themes ,we use game playing to make them learn something and it has been quite effective so far.”

As an Afro-Latina woman, Butler believes she has an important role in the work she does.

“Black and Hispanic are not generally taking classes for STEM early on whereas other races actually do,” Butler said.

A study from Pew Research Center reports “Black and Hispanic workers are underrepresented in STEM jobs.”

Butler’s goal is to undo this by ushering in the next generation of professionals.

“I know we are going to do well. We have the community behind us. We are doing something good. We have a great mission,” Butler said.