Greenville firm works to empower young women

When Greenville staffing firm CE-Solutions isn’t helping match companies and employees, it’s working hard to give young women the skills they need to enter the modern workforce.

Founded in 2004 by Nicole B. Comer, CE-Solutions is proudly woman-owned. So when the org joined with longtime client Barclays for an internship in the bank’s technology group over the summer, the opportunities went to young women.

“Five girls attending Charter School of Wilmington were placed on different agile teams within the Barclays technology group and were paired up with mentors,” said Purnima Montagne, a CE-Solutions Managing Director. “For four weeks, the girls attended standups and worked alongside scrum masters, technologists, product owners and Quality engineering team members to deliver on real projects. They produced viable work product and in one instance, an intern created a new format for use cases that was adopted as the new standard best practice by her product owner.”

CE pledged to donate the profits from its contract, plus a 100 percent match, to Serviam Girls Academy, a tuition-free private school for under-resourced girls in New Castle. The donation was presented Monday at Barclays’ Serviam Golf Classic at Fieldstone Golf Course in Wilmington.

“In addition to the donation, we will be supporting [SGA’s] coding program,” said Montagne. “The program teaches the girls to create an app or website on Chromebooks. The goal is that the girls have tangible coding tools to use in the future. Coded by Kids is assisting them in teaching the curriculum.”

CE-Solutions and Barclays hope to expand the program for the summer of 2019.