The future is being written in lines of code and it matters who writes it. One Bronco is diversifying the field.
“They say the future is being written in lines of code,” Mariel Reyes ’02 says. “I do not want to live in a world where 50 percent of the population is not part of the equation in creating solutions for it.”
It is a problem Reyes left a World Bank job to help solve. In 2016 she founded the nonprofit {reprograma} to teach Brazilian women to code. The country has a growing tech sector, but only 17 percent of engineers are women. The nonprofit is supported in part by big players like Facebook and IBM. It hosts 18-week coding boot camps for unemployed women. Today {reprograma} has 160 grads. Of the most recent class, 85 percent landed full-time jobs in the tech industry.
“I was brought up being told we are here in this world to make a difference,” Reyes says. “That was reinforced at Santa Clara … It’s very much about why are you here, what’s your purpose, and how can you help others?”
