Tech is dominated by white males but Kimberly Bryant is changing that

The position of black women in this innovative industry is getting worse, the founder of Black Girls Code tells Andrew Buncombe

Kimberly Bryant has helped 80,000 women and girls make a start in the tech industry (Getty)

When Kimberly Bryant started the organisation Black Girls Code she wanted to address a glaring deficiency within the world of technology: it was too male and it was too white. The corporate executive wanted there to be more women, and particularly more women of colour. So she quit her job and set about trying to “move the needle”.

Ten years later, her group has helped train and mentor more than 80,000 girls and young women in many of the skills that could help them launch a career in various fields of technology. Yet, when she assesses the system she is trying to correct, while the issue of male-female disparity has improved a little, the number of women of colour has decreased.

“There's still a significant amount of work to do in terms of building this pipeline,” she tells The Independent, speaking from San Francisco. “But there’s even more work to do around longevity and sustaining participation in the industry, once women of colour are able to access these worlds.”