Code First Girls

Code First Girls is a social enterprise that provides free coding courses to women and non-binary people across the UK, Ireland, the USA, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The organization helps companies recruit more women into the tech sector by connecting them with newly trained female developers. Their community of coders, instructors, and mentors is one of the largest in the UK. According to the organisation, as of 2022 they've trained over 50,000 women.[1]

Code First Girls
TypeLimited company
IndustryHigh tech startups
Founded2012
FoundersAlice Bentinck, Matthew Clifford
Headquarters
London
,
England
Area served
United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, USA, Switzerland, The Netherlands
Key people
Anna Brailsford, CEO
Websitecodefirstgirls.org.uk

The organisation's stated goal is to "promote gender diversity and female participation in the technology sector by offering free courses for students and professional women who are wanting to re-train."[2] They also support businesses to train staff and encourage levelling-up for female staff within organisations.[3]

As of 2020, Code First Girls is reported to have provided in excess of £10 million worth of free coding courses to more than 18,000 women since 2013.[4]

In 2017, Code First Girls announced the launch of the "Code First: Girls 20:20 campaign" with the aim to "train 20,000 women to code for free by the end of 2020".[5] As of 2018, Code First: Girls have announced "2020 campaign partnerships" with the following companies: Bank of America Merrill Lynch; Goldman Sachs; KKR; Trainline; and OVH.[6] The organisation announced Baroness Martha Lane-Fox and Dame Stephanie Shirley as supporting the campaign as ambassadors.[7]

History

Code First Girls began in late 2012 as "a nine-week, free, part-time course to get female graduates from all walks of life not only interested in coding, but also better equipped to contribute to technical discussions in high-tech businesses".[8]

Founded by Alice Bentinck and Matthew Clifford, Code First: Girls was created when Bentinck and Clifford recognised a lack of female applications for their pre-seed investment programme Entrepreneur First (EF).[9][10][11]

Bentinck claims that of the first cohort to complete Code First: Girls training, more than half of the women participants self-identified as "technical" or working in software-development roles.[11]

Amali de Alwis was announced as first Chief Executive Officer of the organisation on Wednesday 8 April 2015, taking over from Bentinck and Clifford. [12] Anna Brailsford succeeded Aamil de Alwis as CEO in 2019.[13]

Awards

In 2016 Code First: Girls was nominated for a National Diversity Award.[14][15]

References
  1. Thomas, Kim (9 July 2018). "Women in tech: the IT firms tackling the gender imbalance". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  2. "Code First: Girls". Code First: Girls. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  3. McDonald, Clare (29 June 2016). "To create more female engineers, we need to create more strong female role models". ComputerWeekly.com. Retrieved 11 October 2016.
  4. "Learn to code with these classroom-based UK coding courses". techworld.com. 23 January 2020. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
  5. "Code First: Girls launches campaign to teach 20,000 young women to code for free by end of 2020, secures funding from KKR, OVH and others and opens crowdfund campaign". Code First: Girls. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  6. McDonald, Clare (3 April 2018). "How Code First: Girls uses partnerships to teach girls to code". computerweekly.com. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  7. Lee, Alex (7 March 2018). "Code First Girls wants to teach 20,000 women to code by 2020 - and it could give the UK an edge after Brexit". alphr.com. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
  8. "Girls-only coding class looks to increase female tech startup presence1".
  9. "Inspirational Woman: Alice Bentinck | Co-Founder of Entrepreneur First and Code First: Girls". 2016-04-29. Archived from the original on 2016-07-02. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  10. "ELLE's Tech Titans: Alice Bentinck". ELLE UK. 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  11. "Lessons from running a start-up accelerator". Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  12. "Amali de Alwis joins Code First: Girls as CEO". Code First: Girls. Archived from the original on 2020-04-07. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  13. Leigh, Dana (7 December 2022). "Meet Anna Brailsford, CEO & Co-Founder at Educational Coding Company: Code First Girls". TechRound.
  14. "I have just voted for Code First: Girls for Community Organisation at The National Diversity Awards, click here to vote for this person". nominate.nationaldiversityawards.co.uk. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
  15. "Register Your Interest". Code First: Girls. Retrieved 2016-10-11.
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