Raised and educated in the United States, Kimberlyn saw and experienced the gender gap in STEM fields. Hoping to bridge this gap, she went to Europe on a Fulbright Scholarship to learn more about what it mean to be a woman in STEM in other countries. Through her studies and interviews of real women in STEM in Europe, Kimberlyn noticed one unifying theme rung true across both continents: STEM careers benefited from sustained interests that were often, but not always, sparked as a young child. On that basis, Kimberlyn and the CuSTEMized team set out to vivify the childhood sparks of the women she interviewed in storybook form.