You’ve seen her on the cover of Vogue and walking the runways of Paris fashion week, but have you seen her behind the computer screen writing HTML? Doubtful. Karlie Kloss, an American supermodel and now, entrepreneur, is a leader in the push for #WomenInTech and continues to prove that women are, and will continue to be, influential thinkers and powerful leaders in technology.
Many people look at the world of art and fashion as creative and “right brained,” while the world of computer science and coding as logical and “left brained.” The argument could be raised, however, that this is not necessarily true. Think about it: developers are “creators,” as are writers, graphic designers or fashion designers. While developers are not typically sketching designs or dictating color palettes and imagery, they are taking an idea from scratch and focusing on the manipulation of the “language.” Coding is a sub-genre of writing and in the end, after lines and lines of code are pieced together; something tangible has been created that did not exist before.
In 2014, Karlie Kloss decided to take her personal passion for coding and launched Kode with Klossy, a program empowering young women to learn to code and become leaders in technology. Launched in 2014 after Karlie Kloss began her own adventure in learning to code, Kode With Klossy has grown into a program that hosts girls’ coding summer camps, awards career scholarships to young women developers and helps create a national community influencing a positive perspective of girls and women in technology. Kode with Klossy is gaining support from many different organizations and brands including the Flatiron School, Express, Upperline School of Code and WeWork.
Kode With Klossy is just one of many programs addressing the need to support building a technical female workforce. Technology across industries is a vital piece to making businesses work and is incredibly influential in how consumers discover new products, make purchases and interact with their favorite brands. A brand without these types of features and services would quickly fold because they are not adapting to the digital age we are living in.
It’s past time to address the skills gap we are facing to help businesses harness the power of digital and support programs like Kode With Klossy. We need to feed the starving minds of our coding “artists” to enable businesses and keep moving in the direction of progress. The support shown to the future (and current) generations of IT, computer science, IS (to name a few) students can help enable, shape and evolve the direction our lives and careers are heading. Why not show this support to the young women we are raising who may not have the opportunity to flex their skills otherwise?
Kode with Klossy is one that hits pretty close to our #WomenInTech mission. With countless ways to get involved, check out this program and follow their journey!
