Question
What needs to be visible first?
A free, no-sign-up index of scholarships, courses, mentors, and orgs for women in STEM.
The problem I kept hitting
I'd open a tab for a scholarship deadline, another for a fellowship I'd been told about, another for an org someone mentioned in passing. By the time I came back to apply, the tab was either closed or the deadline had passed.
The information existed. It was just nowhere I could see it together.
What I built
A single index of scholarships, courses, mentorship programs, conferences, jobs, and communities for women in STEM. Filterable by type, cost, and region. No account, no newsletter, no community board, no DMs. Just a list with verified links and dates.
Visual Evidence
Image
Closing-soon comes first
The most useful thing I could do was sort by what's expiring next. If someone lands on the page knowing they have a free hour to apply for something, the answer should be visible immediately. Not buried under "Featured" or "Recommended for you."
A "Closing soon" rail sits above the rest of the list. Each card shows the days remaining. Once a deadline passes, the entry drops to an "expired" state instead of disappearing, so you can still see what was there last month and which orgs run on what cadence.
How the directory stays fresh
curated · typed TS
Verified entries
Scholarships · orgs · programs · conferences · mentorship · courses · communities
8 live feeds
Time-sensitive listings
Jobs (Remotive, Arbeitnow, WWR…), events, grants, hackathons — via REST/RSS
client-side
Filter by category · cost · region + search
useMemo over the combined set — no database round-trip
closing soon
Sort by deadline, drop the expired
Scholarships with a date, soonest first, top of the page
What I left out, on purpose
Left out, on purpose
no
Accounts
Browsing is account-free. Bookmarks live in your browser (localStorage), not behind a sign-up.
no
Community feed
Good communities already exist. The directory points toward them — it doesn't compete.
no
Hand-curated, not crawled
Evergreen links are verified by a person. Slower to grow, but trustworthy.
no
Newsletter
If the directory is good, you don't need a weekly nudge to come back.
No accounts. The friction of signing up to browse a directory is the exact friction that kept me from finding things in the first place. Adding it would defeat the point.
No community feed. There are already good communities for women in STEM. I'm not trying to build another one. The directory's job is to point people toward those communities, not compete with them.
No scraping. Every link gets verified by hand before it goes in. That keeps the index trustworthy at the cost of slower growth, which is a trade I'm fine with. A directory full of stale links is worse than a smaller one that's accurate.
No newsletter. I checked my own email behavior: I subscribe to STEM newsletters and never read them. If the directory is good, you don't need a weekly nudge to come back.
On the design
The visual language leans editorial. Serif display type for headings, monospace for metadata, generous whitespace, and the same warm palette I use across praks.me. I wanted it to feel like a publication you'd want to read, not a database with a UI bolted on.
The two filter rows (type, cost, region) are stacked, not collapsed into a single bar with chips. Stacking makes the available filters scannable on first glance, which matters because most visitors don't know what kinds of opportunities are even in the index until they see the categories spelled out.
What's next
Bookmarking without an account, using local storage. The bookmark icon is already in the nav; it just doesn't persist yet.
Submission form for orgs and program organizers to suggest entries. Curated, not auto-published. I still want every link verified, but a faster intake than the current "DM me on LinkedIn" flow.
A stripped-down email digest (yes, after I just said no newsletter) for people who specifically want closing-soon nudges. Opt-in only, one email a week max, with an unsubscribe in the first line. The point is "you don't need this to use the directory."
