INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Diversity and inclusion is a topic that all too often starts and ends with white women
MotherCoders, while targeting women, aims to support moms of all backgrounds — whether they be LGBTQ, single and/or people of color.
&If
you look at our cohorts, they tend to be really represented,& MotherCoders founder Tina Lee told TechCrunch
&I want to make a cohort that truly diverse and inclusive.&
Google, an imperfect company in the realm of diversity and inclusion, has
teamed up with nonprofit organization MotherCoders and New York City Women.NYC initiative to offer a free, nine-week tech training program
for moms.The initiative was born out of the desire to help moms in New York City, Lee said.
&There a huge population of very educated
people, but moms tend to get pushed out of the workforce,& Lee said
&There this ideal worker model where you have to be in all the time, but maybe they need extra time to recover and can&t do all of the
In many cases, we end up with a lot of moms who are overeducated and underemployed
There no reason why moms shouldn&t be included in the diversity and inclusion initiatives going on.&
MotherCoders is geared toward moms who
want to re-enter the workforce, start their own company or change careers
Through the nine-week program, moms learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript, in addition to tech trends and issues in the industry
The program also offers on-site childcare at no additional cost.
&Our vision with women.nyc is to make NYC the nation best city for women to
succeed across sectors & including tech, where women have historically been underrepresented,& NYC Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen said in a
&MotherCoders offers us a compelling way to address this issue by combining best-in-class training with child care, at once removing two of
the major barriers to women in tech
This partnership will help us build a tech ecosystem that is truly representative of NYC.&
Since its launch in 2015 in San Francisco,
MotherCoders has graduated five classes of women, who have seen an average salary increase of 68 percent
MotherCoders usually costs about $7,000 per student, but in this case, Google is footing the entire bill.
&Google has been proud to support
the amazing work of MotherCoders for the last three years and we&re thrilled to now welcome them to the NYC community,& Google NYC Head of
External Affairs Carley Graham Garcia said in a statement
&Creating opportunities for everyone and increasing access to CS Education is something we have in common with MotherCoders and Women.nyc
and we can&t wait to see the impact this program has on women across the city.&
In order toapply, you must be at least 21 years old, have a
college degree and have at least tried learning how to code
The cohort is accepting applications starting today and begins February 2019.
&Right now, we require a college degree just becausethey&re
the easiest to onramp into tech companies,& Lee said
But as the tech industry becomes more inclusive of people without college degrees, Lee said MotherCoders will follow suit.
While
MotherCoders won&t necessarily make everyone who goes through the program tech job-ready, graduates of the program have gone on to work at
companies like Google, Airbnb and Code for America.
