With diversity in tech a hot button topic in the news, it’s easy to forget that there are organizations that have been working toward advancing the careers of people of color in the industry for many years. Black Girls CODE is one organization that has been devoted to the cause since it’s launch in April 2011. Black Girls CODE currently has 13 chapters, including chapters in the Bay Area, Chicago, New York, Boston, Miami, Raleigh- Durham, DC, Atlanta, Memphis, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, and Johannesburg, South Africa. It maintains offices in Oakland and New York and, to date, has served more than 6,000 students.
Through workshops and after school programs, the non-profit introduces mobile app development, game design, robotics, virtual reality, and web design to young girls from underrepresented communities. With a mission to prove to the world that girls of every color have the skills to become the programmers of tomorrow, its founder Kimberly Bryant has collaborated with Google to bring programming to thousands of girls since its launch. Black Girls CODE’s ultimate goal is to provide African-American youth with the skills to occupy some of the 1.4 million computing job openings expected to be available in the U.S. by 2020, and to train 1 million girls by 2040.
BOLD spoke to Bryant about her segue into the non-profit world and how she keeps going despite the challenges.
How did learning to code change your life?
I have a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering with a minor in computer science and math. My first exposure to coding was when I was in college, back in the mid-80s. It was really at the beginning of the PC-era, with companies like Apple coming up at that time. Because I was in school for engineering, I learned computer programming as part of the curriculum that we had to take, but I didn’t use it. I went on to a career in engineering, but I always had this skill in my toolkit, which was good because, after many, many years of being in an engineering department, I found myself being moved into the technology department of the company I was working for at the time. So this skill that I had in my back pocket all of these years ultimately became a life journey for me, but it was an evolution.
What prompted you to found Black Girls CODE?
In about 2010, I started looking at opportunities for my daughter in coding. She was about 12 years old and had always been into gaming, so I was searching for an organization similar to Black Girls CODE, where she could participate in some technology camps with other girls. There just weren’t many back then. She went to a summer program at Stanford University, and it was life changing for her. She learned how to build games, and they taught simple coding; it became a passion from that point on. She wanted to study computer science and become a game developer. It was a turning point for her. After that class, I looked for other programs to support her, and there just weren’t any that catered to girls – the programs were all mostly boys. So, that’s why I started Black Girls CODE, to create a supportive environment for girls to learn to code alongside other girls.
How can learning to code change the lives of girls of color? What advantages do these skills provide?
I think at a very basic level the world is engulfed by technology; it touches everything. It doesn’t matter if the girls want to pursue computer science, the medical field, entertainment, there is technology in almost every field you can think of today. Since that is not likely to change any time in the near future, it’s critical that these girls have an opportunity to create the programs that they are going to use in their respective careers. At the very least, they should have an understanding and knowledge of what goes into the technology behind the tool that they are using and engaging with on a daily basis. I think it is a tool of empowerment more than anything. It allows them to have another tool in their tool belt; just like learning another language, it’s another tool they can use to advance their education and their knowledge base. It also gives them the chance to become the innovators and creators of some of these solutions or to solve any problem they might encounter. The fact that computer science pays well is just icing on the cake, but that’s not the goal of Black Girls CODE. It’s about empowering them with these tools.
Is enrollment limited to African American girls?
We specifically do outreach to girls of color, which means African Americans, Latinas, etcetera because they are the least represented in the tech industry. But the programs are open to any girls – or anyone identifying as a girl – who wants to participate in the program. We’ve had students of all races and ethnicities involved in our program.
Four years ago, Black Girls CODE received its first grant from Google and last year the organization moved into a permanent home inside Google’s Chelsea headquarters. How has having a major tech player as a primary funder impacted your organization?
The very first grant that we received in 2012 was from Google. We were just starting out and our goal at that time was to reach 1,000 girls all across the country. That grant was very important in helping us see that goal as viable and then work towards achieving it, which we did by the end of that year. Since then we’ve [hosted events and workshops for girls] at Google offices all over, including New York, Pittsburg, Atlanta, and here in the Bay Area. They sent their employees out to volunteer with our program, and now they have given us this opportunity to seed our offices in their New York office. I think these efforts say a lot about their commitment to diversity, and I honestly wish that more organizations would make the same effort. As a non-profit, it’s hard to build a dream because a lot of companies won’t support the vision of what you want to create; they only want to support things that already exist. So, I think this model that Google has developed with us is something that other companies might want to emulate.
Tech has notoriously poor diversity numbers, which have been slow to change despite commitments to do so on the part of the major players. How do you see this partnership with Google changing the diversity dynamics in tech?
There has recently been a lot of focus on ‘pipeline’ programs like Black Girls CODE, but there are many different leaks all along the funnel. People of color aren’t getting into tech early, but there are also problems all along the pipeline, like in recruiting and how the careers of people of color are supported once they are in a tech role. So I’m hoping that Black Girls CODE working directly in Google’s offices will create some synergy. I hope it gives Google’s employees who are interacting with our program the chance to give back to the next generation and that it will also help our girls see Google employees as mentors and role models. I hope it becomes a circular giving back process. Since we have a five-year plan to be in that office, I also hope that Google can learn from us what we know about what is working to draw in diverse candidates and emulate that in their corporate environment.
What gets you out of bed in the morning?
For me, it’s the opportunity to create more opportunity for our students. As the program has grown, my own daughter has grown and I’ve seen all of these changes in her developmental needs and trying to figure out how to keep her engaged and challenged. What keeps me going and getting out of bed is making sure that our program is always working to meet the ever-evolving needs of our students so that we can create opportunities for meeting their goals.
Your motto at BGC is “Imagine. Build. Create.” What’s your personal motto?
One thing I tell my mentees a lot when they reach out to me, whether it’s for advice on a problem or to let me know they’ve reached a goal is, “Keep going.” This race we are running is a marathon, not a sprint. Regardless of our little achievements or our little failures along the way, it’s about remembering to keep going.