Toyota steers Girl Scouts toward financial empowerment

Automakers go all out to make sure they’ve got the vehicles people want to drive.

Toyota’s going even further — they’re out to spark young girls’ inner drive.

It’s all part of a relatively recent formal relationship between Toyota USA and Girl Scouts of the USA. For the second year in a row, more than 100 Girl Scouts from northeast Texas visited Toyota’s corporate headquarters in Plano last month for “Bring Girl Scouts to Work Day.”

Touring Toyota’s vast Texas campus gave the Girl Scouts an “insiders” look at what Toyota does and was a chance to do active, hands-on mentoring versus impersonal support through donations to partnering organizations.

Elena Sacca Smith, manager of Toyota’s corporate social responsibility group, sees “limitless opportunities” to open the Girl Scouts’ minds to career and life possibilities when the girls can meet and talk with key women in Toyota’s operations.

Smith and Karen Ideno, group vice president of marketing, hosted the Girl Scouts visit. Both are former Girl Scouts.

At a roundtable lunch, “each of the girls got to sit with our female Toyota executives for an informal discussion on their day-to-day lives, unique career paths and the challenges they overcame along the way,” said Smith. “The lunch is an informal opportunity to ask a lot of questions and expose them to things the girls may never have known existed.”

“As a Brownie, I was exposed to amazing Girl Scout leaders who instilled the Girl Scouts’ principles of confidence, character and courage, even at a young age,” Smith said. “They were role models for me in terms of taking an active role in the community and making a difference.

“The spirit in...