Diving Into Coding: A Summer Well Spent

While many of us look to summer as a time to take a break and slow down, young women across the country are doing just the opposite.  Over 1,500 girls across the country will spend their summer challenging their minds and gearing up for jobs of the future with Girls Who Code, a national non-profit that seeks to inspire, educate and equip girls with technical skills for the 21st century.

By 2020, there will be 1.4 million jobs available in computing related fields, but women educated in the U.S. are only on pace to filling 3% of these positions.* As a female working in the tech industry – and a former engineer to boot – that statistic is astounding.  Now my job involves helping change that trend, and I feel strongly that these young women and the community they create will be the catalyst for that change. As part of the AT&T Aspire team, I work with programs like Girls Who Code to help increase the number of women and other underrepresented groups working in tech. 

I’m thrilled that as part of this work, we are taking part in Girls Who Code’s largest-ever expansion of its Summer Immersion Program by hosting seven programs at AT&T offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Austin, Redmond, and New York City.  The 7-week Summer Immersion Program teaches young women – rising high school juniors and seniors – everything from mobile app development to robotics to web design. In addition to classroom education, girls will experience real world computer science firsthand, through field trips and meetings with female leaders from AT&T and other technology and media companies.  

AT&T has provided $3 million in funding to Girls Who Code since 2014 and has hosted the Summer Immersion Program since 2013.  I’ve loved getting to see the unique experiences each class of young women has through the program and am excited that we’ll be hosting in more locations than ever before, helping even more girls gain the skills they need to succeed in school and beyond.  AT&T teams from across the country have been hard at work preparing for a meaningful and memorable experience for the girls, and we cannot wait to meet them!

Stay tuned as we share updates from the programs throughout the summer – it may just make you want to step away from the pool and dive into learning something new!

*Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics; McKinsey