Since 2010, the United Nations decided to celebrate the International Day of Girls in ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) with the aim of encouraging technological vocations in girls. The decision came two years after birth of Valeria Corrales and could well be inspired by her.
In Spain, according to data from the Ministry of Education, less than a third of those working in ICT They are women and only a quarter of engineering students are female.
Valeria's story begins when her father, returning from a trip, brought her a doll as a gift that, instead of dresses and accessories, came with pieces to build a zip line and that she had to join together so that she could travel a circuit. From that moment on, programming became one of her main interests. She started looking for tutorials on YouTube about technology and robotics and At the age of 8 he started learning to program and build robots.
It was precisely in a robotics course where he met Patricia Heredia, a telecommunications engineer, who He taught robotics workshops for minors in Huesca and together they created their own YouTube channel with tutorials on technology, programming, mathematics and robotics. A channel that currently has 58,000 subscribers.
Curiosity (and why deny it, sometimes necessity) has led Valeria to create her own robots. One of them is able to solve a Rubik's cube in 26 moves (an invention that earned her an appearance on Got Talent), and another has a sensor that, when we bring a glass to it, fills it with liquid… tired of her little brother interrupting her readings because he was thirsty.
In 2018, when she was barely 10 years old, the Inspiring Girls foundation chose Valeria Corrales as Inspiring Girl of the Year in Spain. In 2020, at the STEM Talent Awards, she was chosen as the best STEM high school student in Spain.. That same year she participated in several sessions in the Spanish pavilion at the Universal Exhibition held in Dubai and a year later she was part of the round table at the WOMANINTECH event, organized by the Immune Technology Institute and which brought together some of the most important women in the world. world of technology. To this we must add talks throughout the country, some of them convened by, among others, Microsoft.
Last year, Valeria was named Changemarker (innovation leaders or references) by Forbes magazine for heru ability to “transform reality” and direct civil society, with its vision and work, towards a more promising future.” Thus, the story that began with a doll, the most stereotypical gift for a girl, led her to be an inspiration for future generations.