Women and girls are naturally agents of change. If we teach one girl to code, she will go on to teach more - we've seen this in our own programs and workshops around the country.
While there should be collective efforts to increase tech inclusion overall, the industry must work to specifically attract and retain women of color.
As the coding movement continues to grow, the common narrative of the white male geek as the predominant influencer on geek culture will erode.
We like to say we hope to be like the Girl Scouts of technology, having many different chapters in many different states as well as many different countries.
If people are not tied to the work from a mission-driven focus, I don't think you're going to motivate them.
It's always been my dream to be an attorney, and I'm that weird breed of human being that loves being in a courtroom.
As a little girl growing up in the Deep South, my mother told me that my future lay in my education. And she was right.
I loved school, was an exceptional student, and found a passion for math and science that led me to Vanderbilt University, where I discovered the world of electrical engineering. I did well in college, loved the work I was doing, and soon found myself climbing the corporate ladder after graduation. I was one of the lucky ones.
I didn't want my daughter to feel culturally isolated in the pursuit of her studies as I had as a young girl. I didn't want her to give up on her passions just because she didn't see anyone else like her in the classroom.
I don't think that the trickle-down theory of diversity ever really works.
For me, if a company is really committed to diversity, that means everything. That means gender diversity, that means sexual orientation for me, that means race, ethnicity.
One of the biggest lessons that we hope to model for several folks, including some of the young women of color who come to me, is the value of understanding your worth, standing up, and demanding the best for yourself and not taking less.
For me, as a woman in one of the less diverse fields - electrical engineering, which is what I studied in college - it was hard to persist and really build a career. Some of the things I experienced were really scary, and they weren't experiences that I wanted for my daughter.
I was doing a lot of networking in the Valley, and I found that it was not a very diverse environment, and most of the conferences and meetup events I went to, there weren't many women or people of color in those rooms.
We really pride ourselves on the notion that what makes our program special is that we really do our very best to make sure that everything we do is culturally responsive and relevant.
Technology can be biased in how it's developed if coders aren't careful. There are apps that are clearly made by companies with no people of color on their team.
By reaching out to the community through workshops, hackathons, and after-school programs, Black Girls Code introduces computer programming and technology to girls from underrepresented communities.
Gender is not central to coding.
Girls are almost always socialized to be perfect: 'Smile, do well in school, don't take too many risks.'
We want to teach girls of color the skills they need and create a diversity of voices into the tech community.
