I've been a software engineer for many years. I love what I do but being in a male-dominated field has never been easy. There have been countless times I thought this job wasn't for me, but I persevered and am now in the midst of an amazing career.
I now focus much of my free time on helping women start, or advance, their development careers. Whether it's mentoring, encouraging, and teaching I do whatever I can to make women feel more at place in development.
Shortly after starting here at Mutually Human, I was asked if I wanted to participate in BitCamp: a one day camp for 7th and 8th grade girls to learn what it's like to be a software developer. I think my response was, "Absolutely!!!" With that many, or more, exclamation points.
Having an 11 year old daughter, I know what a great age it is to be exposed to technology, careers, and all that's possible.
Saturday the 18th, we had a dozen girls spend their day building a website, learning about HTML tags and CSS, and talking about what it is like to be a developer. I was so impressed with the work they did and loved seeing the pride in their eyes when they figured certain things out. It was great!
At the end of the day, the girls were able to present their work to the group, and their parents, showing them what they'd created. As the day wrapped up, parents were thanking the volunteers and the girls were asking when the advanced camp would be offered. How awesome is that!? Not only did they give up a Saturday to be there, they couldn't wait to learn even more.
Being a part of an organization that's welcoming to young women, bringing them technology on their terms, that's what it's all about. Programs like these are helping change the face of software development and I look forward to being part of even more BitCamps.