Code First Girls

In 2011, Code First Girls' founders recognized a critical gap in the technology sector: women were being systematically excluded from tech careers due to inaccessible education pathways and entrenched hiring practices. They realized that traditional university computer science programs weren't reaching the women who could most benefit from tech opportunities, and companies were struggling to find diverse talent to build better products. So they built Code First Girls - a social enterprise dedicated to closing the gender gap in tech by providing free coding education directly linked to employment opportunities.

What started as a local initiative has grown into one of the largest providers of free coding courses for women globally. Having delivered over £75 million worth of free technology education and taught more than 300,000 women to code - three times as many as the entire UK university undergraduate system - Code First Girls is transforming not just individual careers, but entire economies. By working with global partners to build talent pipelines, they've proven that when you remove barriers and create accessible pathways, women don't just enter tech; they thrive as kick-ass developers, data whizzes, and future tech leaders.