Breaking the gender divide in tech
This is the July 19, 2022 edition of the Opportunity Miami newsletter written by Matt Haggman, which we send every Tuesday. Click here to subscribe to get our weekly updates in your inbox.
Featured Content
Opportunity Miami x Refresh Miami Startup Series
Code/Art paints a more equitable tech future for Miami
Q&A with Leandra Hall
Listen up! This Miami teen shares her views on expanding access to STEM & creating a talent pipeline
Two years ago Miami made history.
On November 3, 2020, Daniella Levina Cava was elected the first female mayor of Miami-Dade County, the largest county in Florida.
Ten days later, on Nov. 13, the Miami Marlins named Kim Ng as general manager, making Ng not only the first woman to ever serve as GM of a big league baseball team, but the first woman to lead any team in the four major professional sports leagues in North America.
A week after that, on Nov. 20, Madeline Pumariega was named the first woman president of Miami Dade College, the largest and most diverse campus-based college in the U.S.
Over the course of three weeks, the confluence of groundbreaking events illustrated, once again, Miami’s ability to cast aside old barriers and to change in big, dramatic ways. It also showed what’s possible in other areas where similarly groundbreaking change is being sought.
At the top of that list is building a tech future with women in leading roles. Currently, there is a wide gender disparity. But as technology becomes more and more a part of our everyday lives, a new group of women is breaking the gender divide in Miami’s growing tech scene.
One person leading this change is Amy Austin Renshaw, who founded Miami-based startup Code/Art, which seeks to increase the number of girls interested in computer science.
“It really is an all-hands-on-deck moment, and we need to be doing all we can to make CS education more accessible to all,” said Renshaw, who is CEO of Code/Art and herself a self-taught coder who has three degrees from MIT.
For the third installment of our Opportunity Miami x Refresh Miami Startup Series on entrepreneurs addressing issues pivotal to our economic future, journalist Nancy Dahlberg examines how Renshaw and non-profit Code/Art are working to change this alarming trend.
There is a hill to climb: Women hold just a quarter of the tech jobs in the country. Currently, about 18 percent of computer science graduates are women. And software engineering roles include only 14 percent women.
Code/Art’s approach includes engaging girls as early as third grade and using art as a tool to stir a student’s interest in computer science, which can sometimes be viewed as boring at the outset. All the while, it presents the opportunity to differentiate Miami as a place that is forging a different, more inclusive and equitable, and ultimately more innovative, path.
“We know, from history, the toxic cultures that permeate other tech centers, and we have the opportunity to deliberately create a different culture here,” Renshaw said.
You can read the full story here:
Read Now: Code/Art paints a more equitable tech future for Miami
The first two stories in our series with Refresh Miami were on entrepreneurs Anya Freeman and her startup Kind Designs and Ruben Harris and his company Career Karma.
Meanwhile, this week we share our latest Q&A with a person who is herself representative of Miami’s next generation of tech talent.
Leandra Hall is a 19-year-old Miami native and MAST Academy graduate who is currently attending Spelman College.
Hall founded AfroTechie, which teaches coding at summer camps, after-school programs, and webinars, in an effort to give many more girls and students from underrepresented communities the opportunity to explore STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math).
This summer, Hall is doing an internship at Microsoft in Seattle.
To her, much more needs to be done to expand opportunities in neighborhoods across Miami-Dade County. This includes asking more of the companies that are moving to Miami. Microsoft launched an upskilling program last year, but with the need — and opportunity — so vast, Hall says more is required.
“In order to bring in more people to work in STEM and also diversify the talent pool,” Hall said, “I think these tech companies that are being lured to Miami should have a program to work, either through the county or a specific school, to help introduce STEM concepts.”
You can read the Q&A, in which Hall spoke with Nancy Dahlberg, here:
As ever, social change and business success require many different efforts by a range of people. The work of Renshaw and Hall are two clear examples that portend a truly inclusive tech future. One lesson from those three weeks in November two years ago is that the work ultimately pays off, turning aspiration into reality and making history in a vivid and compelling way.
As always, we want to hear from you. Anything is fair game. You can email us at next@opportunity.miami or engage with us on social media. Please invite friends to subscribe to the newsletter here.
Hope to see you soon.
Matt Haggman
Opportunity Miami
matt@opportunity.miami
@matthaggman
