Scientist

We want to see companies making a good faith effort and putting some tangible initiatives behind their pledge for diversity.

We want to teach girls of color the skills they need and create a diversity of voices into the tech community.

Women are both talented and innovative thinkers and tend to use computer science as a tool to solve larger problems.

There's not enough said about the beauty of being able to focus on what you do well.

We need to have women as role models, both inside and outside corporate America's leading tech companies, leading the path for other women.

I definitely think there needs to be more of a focus and movement on getting coding taught in schools. There's really only so much after-school programs like Black Girls Code can do to really drive that change. And those classes shouldn't only take place in high school. We should make sure that we teach kids about coding at an early age.

If technology is designed mostly by white males, who make up roughly half our population, we're missing out on the innovation, solutions, and creativity that a broader pool of talent can bring to the table.

While there should be collective efforts to increase tech inclusion overall, the industry must work to specifically attract and retain women of color.

Technology can be biased in how it's developed if coders aren't careful. There are apps that are clearly made by companies with no people of color on their team.

Gender is not central to coding.

Few of my classmates looked like me. While we shared similar aspirations and many good times, there's much to be said for making any challenging journey with people of the same cultural background.

As the coding movement continues to grow, the common narrative of the white male geek as the predominant influencer on geek culture will erode.

I had been tracked from grades 1 through 12 in an accelerated program in the public school system in Memphis and had done well in math and science classes. When I was getting ready for college, my guidance counselors suggested I look into engineering.

Although we use a lot of technology and consume a lot of technology as people of color, we're usually not the ones at the tables doing the creating of it.

My first introduction to computers and computer programming came during my freshman year of college. I majored in electrical engineering with a minor in computer science, so I learned during my required courses at Vanderbilt University.

We want to create a community of girls who will be empowered to become catalysts for transformation in their communities.

We need to really focus on getting this digital equity across the board in all of our public school systems, for both girls and boys.

While there is still certainly much more work that needs to be done, Lyft actually believes in increasing diversity and inclusion within their workforce, and also, they believe in being a strong supporter of that in the community.

I was doing a lot of networking in the Valley, and I found that it was not a very diverse environment, and most of the conferences and meetup events I went to, there weren't many women or people of color in those rooms.