You may have seen them around on Our or Twitter, or maybe at one of Umbraco meetups or perhaps shared a chat or two at Codegarden... Meet the amazing women coders from the Umbraco community: Poornima, Emma, Carole, Blake, Lindsay, Lotte and Brittany:
Poornima Nayar, Freelance Web Developer, UK:
“When I entered the programming industry I never thought of facing the prejudice as a woman. I had no such concerns. I always believed and still believe that if you are good there is nothing stopping you.”
Emma Garland, Senior Software Engineer at Rock Solid Knowledge, UK:
“I have always been comfortable with computers and consoles. My family are into tech and gaming, my grandad, dad and uncle all have experience as coders, and from an early age my sister and I were given hand-me-down PCs and consoles to play with.”
Carole Rennie Logan, Senior Developer at Equator, UK:
“You often hear "you can't be what you can't see", if you only ever see male contributors to open source projects or male speakers at conferences then you don't see your place there and assume you don't belong. These role models are also showing men that women can do these things too, slowly changing stereotypes.”
Blake Clerke, Front-end Developer at DiscoverTec, US:
“Women supporting each other is a big deal, not just in this industry but as a whole. I think taking more classes or socializing with women in the industry already would really help ladies to get more involved, seeing that it really isn't as intimidating as one might think.”
Lindsay Alford, Web Developer Contractor, UK:
“Growing up my parents taught computing at college so I had exposure at an early age <...> I rebelled against my parents’ career at first and wanted to be an environmental scientist but I soon realised that I was rubbish at science and that computing was far easier for me to understand.”
Lotte Pitcher, Director, PAM Internet, UK:
“In my early teens my mother used to employ me as a systems tester on her Windows software. She figured if a 13 year old could use the system it was good enough. I guess that must have been when I caught the coding bug.”
Brittany Dufort, Developer at Garrigan Lyman Group (GLG), Seattle, Washington, USA:
“We need to strategically market ourselves as not just being coders and nerds, but also branch out and market to the general interests of most women, while also making it known that everyone is an individual and that being yourself is celebrated.”