AUGUST 2020 | ENGINEBUILDERmag.com 31
LOXLEY BROWNE
CEO, ATHENA RACING
L
Loxley Browne moved to San Diego, CA three years ago and immediately got involved
with the STEM ecosystem there. She wanted to get more young girls involved in science,
technology, engineering and math, and what better way to do that than to pair those skills
with transportation, automotive and motorsports. Loxley started Athena Racing in April 2019
with the goal of inspiring girls to see a future in automotive. It’s not just for the boys after all.
“ ey’re nally starting to push girls in
that direction and realizing how much
girls love it,” Loxley Browne says. “I
came up with this idea for Athena and
pitched to a whole bunch of my race
car driving friends over lunch one day,
and then I just went into hyper mode
and made it happen.”
Athena Racing is career
development, essential life skills
training and that peek behind the
curtain into all of the di erent
types of careers that are available in
the automotive, motorsports and
transportation sectors.
“I made it seem really cool by
adding a race car to it, but what it
really does for the girls is shows them
what’s available out there,” she says. “A
lot of them just never think beyond
being Danica Patrick. is was my way
of just pulling that curtain back like
the Wizard of Oz and saying, ‘Here’s
everything you can possibly do.’”
Since Loxley herself has been
around racing and the auto industry
for many years, she knows how
important it is for young girls to have
the kind of support Athena Racing is
providing.
“I’ve always been the only woman
in a room in every career that I’ve
had,” she says. “I understand how you
need to have that cheerleader that
really helps you boost your con dence
at a young age.”
Only a year into her new
endeavor, COVID-19 changed the
entire landscape of how Athena
Racing’s camps function. Fortunately,
Loxley was ready.
“We did a really big pivot in
March like a whole lot of people have,and I took Athena Racing from it just
being a team of ve with the gradual
expansion that I was going to do, and
I took what I had planned on doing
two years from now and brought that
to the forefront very quickly,” she
says. “We’re doing a lot of teaching
online now. We just nished up our
rst online camps in July. e girls are
going bonkers over it.”
A typical Athena Racing camp
is ve weeks long and covers 10
di erent education tracks. Each
week, the girls cover two of those 10
tracks and are at the camp for a 5-6
hour day. Girls attending Athena
Racing camps are middle school andhigh school age, and a majority are
between 12 and 14.
“ e majority of them, 75%, are
based here in Southern California,”
she says. “We also have about 10%
from the East coast. We also have
students in India, Nepal and Mexico
calling in for the Zoom meeting.
We’re getting girls from all over the
place. It’s amazing.”
Looking ahead to Athena Racing’s
future, Loxley says expansion and
getting in front of more young girls
across the U.S. is the key.
“For me right now, it’s a lot of
raising awareness and getting in front
of as many of these students as we can
possibly talk to,” Loxley says.
Girls who are in middle school
and high school and are interested in
participating in the camps can go to
the Athena Racing website and get
veri ed. EB23-32 eb.aug20 Women in the Industry.indd 31 8/7/20 8:29 AM
Naresh Jariwala