Meet Kimberly Bryant The Founder of Black Girl Code

When you think of the word computer scientist what comes to mind? Maybe a white nerdy looking person behind a computer screen right? Well what if we told you a woman named Kimberly Bryant was about to make you think that when you hear the word computer scientist you think of a bright young lady of color sitting behind the computer screen?

Meet Kimberly Bryant a mother of a beautiful young lady of color who decided she needed to make a change when she saw her only daughter get overlooked because of what she looked like. There is a worldview and perception that Kimberly is trying to change because well, let’s face it, the future will be written in code and she wants to find a way to get women into the industry and have them stay there.

Kimberly was invited to ‘Hackathon’ in New York City where she was headed to get inspired and bring the ‘Hackathon’ experience to her students and really make it a girl friendly and girl focused environment and from there she created ‘Black Girls Code.’

Black Girls Code trains girls of color ages 7-17 to become “coding ninjas” the creators of our tech future. BGC’s NYC Hackathon is a coding bootcamp and competition and girls team up to design original app concepts from start to finish in the course of just 3 days. And when the bootcamp was over, she knew she had to keep kids inspired and when a friend told her she had told her she had just what she needed in order to create her own program she knew just what she had to do.

Kimberly, a electrical engineer herself, took the plunge and launched a 6-week pilot program in Bayview-Hunters Point, one of the few historically black neighborhoods in San Francisco and when she saw the girls joining together to get inspired by technology and computer science she knew it was a success.

Girl power is right, because in 2012 Google gave BGC its first real grant to support its rapid coast-to-coast chapter expansion. These girls leaving the program now have the courage to say that they can be a programmer or that they can be a computer scientist and actually make it happen! So step aside men in the tech world because these girls are here to stay!