Girls Who Code graduates two new devs from Brooklyn high schools

Anah Lewi likes to build. To her, building a robot or building a website is the same.

She doesn’t really see a difference, but after completing her summer with Girls Who Code, she does see that seeing a project through to its completion, doing it herself, is really satisfying.

Lewi is a Brooklynite among the 20 high school girls who graduated from the New York City Girls Who Code summer immersion program late last month. The East Flatbush resident is now a junior at Williamsburg High School.

As her class of devs-in-training met with professionals in the tech industry over the course of the summer, they impressed on Lewi the fact that the work is flexible and the work conditions are great — but tech companies are looking for people who are really invested in what they are doing.

Lewi is becoming more and more sold on the work. She told us that she enjoyed making complicated websites, saying, “I think that’s what I really enjoyed the most out of everything, because I got to take my artistic skills and integrate that with coding. It made it seem like everything is possible if you know how to code.”

“I think the feeling you get from working on something by yourself and seeing it come to life is amazing and profound,” Lewi added.

She told us that she kept working on what they learned during their daylong sessions at home in the evenings. Now that Girls Who Code is done, her mom wants her to build a website for her, so she’ll probably do that. Lewi also likes adventure video games. She may try to build one of her own.

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Lewi was not the only Brooklynite in the program. She also graduated with rising senior, Ivy Wong, of Gravesend. Girls Who Code says Lewi, Wong and their classmates got the equivalent of a full semester’s worth of college-level software development instruction this summer.

AT&T marked the graduation ceremony with a $1 million contribution to Girls Who Code, presented by Marissa Shorenstein, AT&T’s New York State President. Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, accepted the contribution after the graduation ceremony.

“As we work to close the gender gap in technology and empower young women across the country, AT&T’s collaboration — from contributing financial resources to engaging employees in our mission — has been essential,” Saujani said. “Together we are creating an environment that exposes girls to computer science careers and leaders and demonstrates to them that with this skillset, the possibilities are endless.”

The summer’s curriculum focused on several programming languages, including JavaScript, HTML and CSS. The class also programmed robots and built mobile apps from the ground up. During the final weeks of the program, the girls were tasked with creating and developing their own, original projects, which they demonstrated to each other in class and presented to the audience at graduation.”