Thursday, February 17, 2011

Friday 2 PM On: PaperlessPost.com


Alexa's PaperlessPost

151 West 25th Street
Between 6th and 7th
9th Floor


Making Bacon! from Aaron Quint on Vimeo.
Vanessa Hurst, Destroying the Female Programmer Stereotype Besides being a significant contributor at, Paperless Post, a startup in NYC, Vanessa has also taken the problem of the lack of women programmers into her own hands. ..... At UVA, I started in biomedical engineering, thinking I might be a doctor until I took my first computer science course. .... discovered the #1 need for non-profits is IT and other tech skills ..... I went to a breakfast called ‘Hot and Bothered: Time To Change the Ratio of Women in Tech’ and met one of the co-founders, Alexa Hirschfeld and we got to know each other. I don’t usually go to these types of events. I like coding better than networking ...... since we need highly engaged students, we won’t do online learning until we get better at this. We’re not really ready for that possible disconnect yet. We like to incorporate social, in-person interaction when we can. ...... There is a gender gap in STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math) fields and it’s wider in Engineering and even wider in Computer Science. The gender gap in medicine is almost gone now, but it’s just not happening in computer science. ..... Assuming that over time, the gender gap will magically disappear is not going to work. There are many components to this problem, but a huge element is that young girls need role models...... We need to disengage from stereotypes. I never did any stereotypical engineer-type things. I talk a lot. I don’t really tinker with machines just to see how they work, but if I need to use something I will figure it out. ...... You shouldn’t have to be a complete renegade to be a good female programmer.

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