September 14, 2022

Code First Girls - Anna Brailsford - one million coding opportunities

35 minutes

Today's guest is Anna Brailsford, the CEO of Code First Girls, a UK-based coding school giving free coding education to women.

They have just raised £4.5m and are using it to create 1 million learning opportunities for women .

Code First Girls was set up to alleviate the colossal gender gap that exists in coding. It is actually quite frightening: 93% of all professional tech developers identify as men.

The consequences of this are very real too - GCHQ has partnered with Code First Girls to improve their diversity in order to tackle threats ranging from foreign states to child online safety.

With coding guaranteed to be one of THE jobs of the future, this is a fascinating episode with the woman in charge of making sure that everyone can access this vital skill set.

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Once again thank you to our series partner Octopus Group, a collection of 8 entrepreneurially minded businesses that look to back the people, ideas and industries that will change the world.

In this episode with Anna we discuss:

Code First Girls - Where did the name come from?

Why the name is beloved by the CFG community

How big the CFG community has grown to become a global community

How do they define coding as a skill?

The challenge of explaining coding to a 10-year-old

Anna’s career-long passion for ed-tech inspired by her mum’s entrepreneurial lifestyle

Important skills people need to have for the future

If Anna was 22 in 2022 what sector would she look to work in

And why you don’t need a computer science degree

The difference between being a CEO versus a founder and what makes an entrepreneur

And why forgiving yourself is so important

Code First Girl’s huge news announcement… a £4.5m raise and a £1 billion economic opportunity for women.

What jobs are CFG hiring for?

Why having more women in our security services makes the UK harder to attack.

Their collaboration with BAE systems

Why has coding been dominated by men in the past?

How did Anna find female mentors?

Anna’s advice for young people graduating now: Understand your own worth and realise that not everything comes at once.

What book would she recommend - Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed

Pass the mic- other female entrepreneurs that deserve more spotlight - Michelle Kennedy

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