Welcome Girls Who Code Participants!

We want to give a warm welcome to the young women who will be taking part in this year’s **Girls Who Code **(GWC) Summer Immersion Program. Starting in our San Jose office, and then rolling out to the other sites over the coming weeks, Adobe has opened its doors to 100 high school girls interested in exploring a career in computer science. This is the third year Adobe has invested in the program as part of the Adobe Foundation’s Youth Coding Initiative. Our support of coding nonprofits partners like Girls Who Code and Technovation is a part of Adobe’s diversity and inclusion commitment to the tech industry.

Over 150 Adobe employees across the country are contributing their time to make this a successful experience for these young women – including 100 female mentors.

In addition to the mentors, GWC planning committees have volunteered to ensure programming at each site is successful, and four employees will be on hand as full-time teachers in the summer program.

“Some are veterans of the program, and some are leading GWC for the first time,” said Janice Peters, the program manager who has orchestrated the immersion program for the past three years. “Some are technical and some are non-technical, but all have a common interest; supporting the next generation of girl coders.”

One of Adobe’s GWC advocates is Customer Success Manager, Noha Edell. She is the Lead for the New York GWC planning committee and has been involved with GWC since 2013. She and her team of committee leaders are looking forward to the 2016 program. “I am super excited to host the girls at our Adobe NY site. It is a dream come true for me,” said Noha.

Across the four Adobe GWC sites, employees on the planning committees uphold the importance of the Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) education and the call for increased diversity in these fields. Robin Tobin, head of Strategic and Vertical Accounts Marketing in New York notes, “The development of world-class talent in STEM is critical to global leadership.”

Senior Administrative Assistant, Kristin Seitz, volunteered to join the San Jose GWC Planning Committee because of her strategic role in the Document Engineering group. “I have been on the GWC planning committee for three years with increasing involvement. As an admin on a large engineering team, I appreciate having this chance to directly work on improving the gender balance of our workforce. This work also allows me to grow my network and skills within Adobe”.

Global Marketing’s Ellen Vanderwilt volunteers as San Francisco’s Education Champion because she believes “early and ongoing learning is the single best gage of building a more open-minded, creative and intelligent world. I love that Girls Who Code demystifies software engineering, focuses on underserved young women of STEM, and encourages creativity and entrepreneurship!”

Lead Quality Engineer, Tom Nord is Seattle’s Education Champion and a key driver in making Seattle’s GWC program happen. “I am always interested in educational programs that Adobe is involved in. As a feminist, I am very excited about what programs like Girls Who Code, CodeNow, and Black Girls Code are doing. When an opportunity arose that combined two things I am passionate about, I had to get involved.”

We look forward to meeting the GWC students and seeing the amazing work to come from their summer experience at Adobe.