I am a coder and hiring manager for Rails developers. I am father of a daughter who aspires to a career in science and technology. For both reasons, I am grateful that there are programs like RailsBridge that introduce Ruby and Ruby on Rails to women interested in the technology and hopefully, a career in software development.

Bianca Rodrigues provides a nice, brief description of the RailsBridge NYC workshop June 6th.

It was great to meet other newbie Ruby developers who were going through some of the same beginner pains that I was. The workshop was a positive experience, and gave me the push I periodically need to keep myself immersed in technology. (read the entire post)

There is a large body of research and writing (including my own paper) on the fact that women are drastically under-represented in software development disproportionate to other careers in science and technology.

If you are an experienced developer, please consider volunteering. I participated as a TA and it really only took two evenings and one full day of my time to be of use to this great program. The experience of coaching is both a joy and a refreshing opportunity to see what you do through other people’s eyes.