Reshma Saujani: learn Coding, close Gender Gap

The third guest at Meet the Media Guru 2018 will be Reshma Saujani . A lawyer and activist, she is the founder of Girls Who Code, a non-profit organisation that since 2012 has dealt helped girls with digital literacy, encouraging them to take STEM curricula (acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

At Meet the Media Guru, Reshma Saujani will focus on the opportunities Coding e Digital Education can provide to young women. The talk is scheduled for Tuesday 5th June at 7.30pm at Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci (via San Vittore 21 – Milan). Register here.

The event is held in collaboration with Editrice Il Castoro, which has complemented its catalogue with the practical hand book Girls Who Code. Learn to code and change the world and a fictional series aiming to include coding also in stories for young girls by Stacia Deutsch.

The purpose of Girls Who Code, which currently involves approximately 90,000 young women across the United States, is to reduce the gender gapin order to reach employment equality in STEM professions by 2027.

Girls Who Code was founded almost by chance: in2010 Reshma was the first Indian-American woman to run for Congress. During her campaign, she visited hundreds of schools and notices a reduced presence of young girls in technology and computer science courses. At the same time, tens of parents ask for more coding and digital education courses for their daughters. Two years later, Reshma founded Girls Who Code.

“After only six years we have reached a critical point.We are on track to achieve gender parity in computer science by 2027 – wrote Saujani in an open letter she published in the website of Girls Who Code – Women and girls across the country are coming together to correct centuries-long power imbalances across lines of gender, race, sexuality, and more. Girls Who Code is proud to be a part of this movement, and even prouder because our girls – girls of all races and ethnicities and abilities and zip codes – are leading it”.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Reshma Saujani was born in the United States in 1972. A graduate from the University of Illinois, she specialised at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard and later at the School of Law at Yale. Moreover, Reshma has been Deputy Public Advocate for the City of New York. Her name was included in Fortune’s list of the 40 world leading women below 40 years of age.

To join the event, you can register here.