Kimberly Bryant likes to say, “Before BGC, I was just a nerdy mom raising a geeky daughter.” Kimberly wanted to encourage her daughter Kai to pursue her interests in STEM, but they were both frustrated that most, if not all, youth coding programs were dominated by young, white men. When she looked beyond Kai, she learned that the number of women and girls receiving degrees in computer engineering had plummeted from a high of 30% thirty years ago to a low of 12% today for women overall and less than 3% for women of color. She was determined to shake things up and, “create a better, more ideal, and perhaps easier pathway for my daughter and girls like her.” She used the skills she had gained as an engineer to spot an issue in the world that she wanted to solve and then harnessed an ever growing community and movement to solve it.

Before founding Black Girls CODE, Kimberly enjoyed a successful career in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.