Rooks and Roots Promotes Mentorship, Inclusivity for Girls in Chess

When girls walk into a room and see male-identifying competitors constitute the overwhelming majority, they can feel alienated and unwelcome. Rooks and Roots, co-founded by WGM Iris Mou and Lisa Sun, works to combat this issue in both the math and chess worlds.

Earlier this year, Rooks and Roots made use of a US Chess Women’s Grant to plan, coordinate, and organize a free chess festival for 60 girls in New York City. As a nonprofit dedicated to creating a welcoming and social environment for girls to connect to fellow girls in their areas of interest, over 580 girls from almost 50 New York City schools participated in Rooks and Roots’ activities. In the 2025-2026 school year, over 300 girls attended our weekly workshops alone. Since then, Rooks and Roots was able to host both the Girls’ Math and Chess Summer Camp Series along with the Second Girls’ Chess Festival in rapid succession.

We also expanded our outreach nationwide via our two brand new chapters, one in Texas and the other online. Weekly workshops were also able to blossom and students received more personal guidance. The large growth of our organization is not limited to participants. We have created an online chapter in order to improve accessibility, and we have quadrupled the size of our volunteer team to accommodate this growth.

As an organization, Rooks and Roots aims to teach girls that it is not always about winning the game; sometimes it's more important to focus on the community, and to help others in the future as well. By providing an opportunity to step into teaching, mentoring, and organizing roles, we hope to keep more girls who grew up playing chess involved in the chess world.

In writing this article, I hope to show why organizations like Rooks and Roots are so important for making chess a more gender-inclusive space, highlighting feedback from parents and volunteers. I also hope that this article encourages readers to get involved, whether with Rooks and Roots, with other organizations in their community, or by starting their own!

Organizing Philosophy and Feedback

A parent who has attended multiple of our events reminds people that, “Introducing girls to chess and math at a young age is about more than building skills: It’s about building confidence, curiosity and a sense of belonging. When girls see other girls excited to learn, they begin to see these subjects as spaces where they belong too”.

Our inclusive environment prioritizes personalized small-group mentorship in accordance with familiarity with chess. Girls get to learn chess alongside peers at the same level, so no two kids in the same group have a large difficulty gap.

A word cloud based on adjectives parents used to describe us!

A parent wishing to remain anonymous noted that seeing other girls participating in the program helped to “create an image in [their daughter’s] head that girls can be great at chess and math too.” These blooming friendships combat the feeling of isolation, especially because it's difficult to express these feelings to someone who has not felt them.

Scenes from the Dalton festival. (All photos courtesy of the organizers)

Girls walk away from workshops and festivals feeling confident and ready to take on the world. Parents told us that their children “[feel] more ready to face the mistakes [they make] in chess” and are “more motivated to take bigger challenges.”

Girls playing chess at the Chess and Math summer event.

Participants play chess during the 2026 Girls’ Math and Chess Summer Camp!

Girls who joined us for the chess festivals felt that attending “was reassuring” since they were able to “see many ‘girl chessplayers like me’ and to find a sense of belonging in this community.” We learn as much from going over our games and studying with other chessplayers as we do from competing. So if girls feel cut off from the social aspects of chess, they miss out on the social benefits.

“Rooks and Roots has helped my daughter approach chess and new challenges with greater confidence and curiosity…I especially love seeing her become more comfortable challenging herself without being intimidated by who she is competing against. These are lessons that go far beyond chess and will continue to shape how she approaches math, problem-solving, and new experiences,” said a parent who joined us for our most recent festival at Hunter.

“Rooks and Roots has had such a positive impact on my 6-year-old daughter’s confidence. It has helped her see chess as a game of strategy, critical thinking, and skill, rather than something defined by gender. I love that she is learning to focus on the quality of the game and the strength of her opponent, rather than whether she is playing against a boy or a girl. It’s wonderful to see her growing confidence and developing a mindset where she feels she belongs and can compete equally,” said Zeba R, the parent of a child who has attended our festivals.

Kids listen to their mentors in groups as they conduct lessons!

The most recent festival, held on September 30th, followed a similar blueprint and was just as delightful of an event as the previous one! “My daughter made multiple friends at the Girls Chess Festival at Hunter. It was enjoyable for her to play games, solve puzzles and work together with kids she'd never met before!” said Bengi T. Other parents have asked for us to host “festivals more often” since attending them was so impactful for their children.

Girls’ Chess Festival (at Hunter) attendees watch the raffle to get chess books!

Volunteers grade the puzzle contest at Hunter as the day wraps up!

In addition, our online workshops have been proven necessary for some families in order to participate in our organization. One of our families discovered Rooks and Roots via the library branch we collaborate with, yet could not make our weekly times. Instead of missing out, they were able to join the online chapters and learn math and chess in their own way.

Volunteer Team Growth

Dhanvi Namala is a student at the Lowery Freshman Center in Dallas, Texas. Namala was the number 27 15-year-old-girl in the country as of August, and she represented USA in international events such as the 2024 FIDE World Youth Chess Championship and last year’s Pan-American Under-20 Championship.

She notes, “It can feel isolating to walk into rooms where very few people look like you, and the pressure to prove yourself is always there.” After meeting Iris at the Pan-American Chess Championship, Dhanvi got involved with Rooks and Roots and created a new chapter based in Texas. Despite expecting low attendance and a quiet day in the park for the first Texas big event, it turned out to be a “magnet for the crowd,” drawing “people of all different ages and backgrounds” together “to challenge us, solve problems, and passionately ask how they could get involved with our program”.

“Through Rooks and Roots, I realized that my purpose isn't just to compete, but to break down those barriers so the next generation of girls can walk into these spaces completely unafraid, knowing that their intellect and creativity belong at the table just as much as anyone else's,” Namala said.

Dallas, Texas, Fretz Park Library Branch Event!

Eleanor Wang is a freshman at the Dalton School, and joined Rooks and Roots this year. Dalton offers an accelerated math track for certain students, and Eleanor reflects on her gender as a possible reason for not being chosen earlier. Instead of being able to accelerate multiple years by skipping earlier and easier grades, she “only received the opportunity when everyone else got it compared to boys who were offered it”. Eleanor also played chess at a young age, but “quit chess pretty young due to hating the competitiveness of it”, which Rooks and Roots attempts to prevent by giving children a friendly environment to learn and grow.

Tasnim Ullah, a sophomore attending the elite Stuyvesant High School, talks about her experience. Despite being female, she has won and placed in multiple chess tournaments. In addition, Tasnim has witnessed her female friends and other girls shine. Both of those factors contributed to her belief in women and how she “never felt unequal to men”. Yet despite those positive factors, she sees “the inequality and [wishes] that other women believed in themselves”, which played a role in her decision to join Rooks and Roots.

Soumilli Dey, from Oak Middle School in Massachusetts, is the online chapter creator and a competitive chess player who has placed in multiple tournaments including placing 10th place at Girls’ Nationals. As someone who noticed the “huge gender difference when [she] played in competitive tournaments”, Soumilli “took the initiative for this opportunity” and “was looking across places to teach chess” when she came upon Rooks and Roots. When realizing that many students would likely be unable to join location based workshops, Soumilli recently created the online chapter to allow Rooks and Roots to be more accessible to all.

zoom — Volunteers lead the online chapter into breakout rooms to do worksheets and lessons!

Sophie Yang goes to the Dalton School as a freshman. As a girl who competes in math, she remarks about her experience with her school at MATHCOUNTS, a widely known middle school competition. For instance, “in 7th grade, the team consisted of five girls to seven boys. By 8th grade, the team was just three girls to nine boys”. This type of demographic is the direct cause of comments like “I noticed you since you were the only girl in the room”, which was said by one of her new classmates. The visible issue led her to join Rooks and Roots, in order to provide a community for the newest generation of math students and chess players.

Future Opportunities

If you or your child is even remotely interested in chess, we encourage you to come join our weekly workshops online, at the NYPL library or in Texas! These are run every Monday from 4-6 PM, and tailored to the individual child. We can teach chess, play chess or provide math puzzles to challenge their abilities! We can also provide homework help and teach both strategies used in schools and handy competition tricks.

This is our third year running these weekly workshops, and we have made an impact for the better on our mentees. Over 580 students have participated in Rooks and Roots, and we can’t wait to have you join our organization as well!

To stay posted on opportunities opening up around your area, check out our website and join our email list!

Want to help us extend our outreach by volunteering with Rooks and Roots? Interested in creating a chapter of your own and empowering girls in your area? Reach out to Click here to show email address and submit the volunteer form to find out more!