On Feb. 11, 2026, Iona student volunteers visited Webster Elementary School to lead group activities at Mastercard’s Kids4Tech event, teaching Webster students about cybersecurity, algorithms, data science, cryptology, and more. Karen Abbruzzese, Iona trustee and senior vice president of Mastercard North America Franchise, assisted in the event.
Kids4Tech, the world’s largest STEM program, is designed to immerse schoolchildren in the science of data. Mastercard employees are deployed to schools across 65 countries to teach children aged eight to 16 and to make education fun. Kids4Tech offers volunteering opportunities to external organizations such as Iona, and a handful of Iona students answered the call on a chilly Wednesday in February.
“Representing Iona at Mastercard’s Kids4Tech event was both an honor and a privilege,” said Maureen Rutledge, a second-year Iona student. “Working with today’s students, watching their creativity blossom, and gaining hands-on experience on how a world-class organization manages events was a very valuable opportunity.”
The event consisted of a series of stations set up in the Webster gymnasium. Webster students were divided into groups and sent to different stations on a rotating basis, each representing a different area of data sciences. Iona volunteers were tasked with overseeing a group of six Webster students in addition to greeting students as they travelled around the gymnasium. According to Assistant Director for Iona Student-Alumni Engagement Matthew Ricker, the role of Iona students was to help operations run smoothly, ensuring that Webster students had the best experience possible.
“The Webster school children were very appreciative and engaging and got a lot out of the Kids4Tech event,” said Ricker. “The Iona students had a great time volunteering with the Mastercard employees, and it [was] rewarding to see the children having a fun day [and] learning lots of great topics!”
By delivering its Kids4Tech program, Mastercard seeks to cultivate the next generation of data scientists, problem-solvers, and creative thinkers. Accelerating throughout the last five years, Kids4Tech has now interacted with more than 12 million students worldwide, and Iona has provided valuable contributions to this project. Mastercard will continue to offer educational services across the United States and abroad.
