Young Women Coding: Laura W.

We are always excited to see someone doing something amazing on social media, especially if it is people learning how to code and participating in competitions. We also love hearing about people and organizations looking to bridge the gender gap in the tech industry.

We were recently contacted by a woman who wanted to talk to us about her daughter, Laura W. Laura had participated in National Center for Women and Information Technology Aspirations in Computing Award. The purpose of the contest is to "build a talent pool for the growing technical workforce and help academic and corporate organizations celebrate diversity in computing by honoring young women at the high-school level for their computing-related achievements and interests."

Laura was a runner-up for the competition, which is quite impressive seeing how there were 350 applicants from around the country. She was introduced to the competition via the Girls Who Code program, which is an eight week summer program where she learned how to code in languages, such as Scratch, JavaScript, C, Python, JQuery Mobile, and HTML/CSS. Girls Who Code works to bridge the gender gap in technology through immersive summer programs that introduce young women to computer programming.

"During the eight weeks, I learned something that I had never even heard about: coding," she said in an email. "After being introduced to coding, I feel like it is a part of my life and is something that is really important to me and should be even more important to other young women."

Women make up roughly 12% of the hires in the tech industry, according to Lauren Bacon, cofounder of Raised Eyebrow Web Studio. When asked about the problem of the lack of women in the industry, Laura states that she thinks there are not many women in programming because "they feel they are intimidated by boys." There is truth in what she says; the tech industry has been a boys' club for a while. We'd like to see that change.

We're very proud to see more young women finding their passion in computer technology, and we'd like to see Laura be successful in the industry in the future! Thanks for talking with us, Laura, and good luck!

Remember, we do offer scholarships to women for every class. If you'd like to enter the tech industry and find a meaningful career, please reach out to us!