Girl Develop It wins $50,000 at WeWork Creator Awards

Last Thursday, as its annual leadership summit was raging at Grubhub HQ in Chicago, tech education nonprofit Girl Develop It was taking home a $50,000 prize at the regional semifinals for WeWork’s Creator Awards.

The national organization, whose executive director Corinne Warnshuis is based in Philadelphia, beat out 1,700 applicants from across the Eastern United States, Puerto Rico and Ontario at the competition.

“We’re so thrilled about the donation, and incredibly grateful to WeWork and Adam Neumann for their support of our mission to create welcoming, supportive opportunities for women and non-binary adults to learn software development,” Warnshuis said in an email Saturday.

Since March 2017, coworking company WeWork has hosted 13 Creator Awards events, doling out “millions of dollars” in cash prizes to entrepreneurs from inside and outside its network of coworking spaces.

“These Creator Awards are not just sweeping the nation, these Creator Awards are sweeping the world,” said Ashton Kutcher, who emceed and judged the event.