Plenary: Kimberly Bryant & Sarah Guthals in Conversation
Plenary Talks
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Bryant, Kimberly
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Guthals, Sarah
Extended Abstracts of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems
2016-05-07
v.2
p.3909-3910
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: Kimberly Bryant
Kimberly Bryant is the Founder and Executive Director of Black Girls CODE, a
non-profit organization dedicated to -- changing the face of technology? by
introducing girls of color (ages 7-17) to the field of technology and computer
science with a concentration on entrepreneurial concepts.
Kimberly has enjoyed a successful 25+ year professional career in the
pharmaceutical and biotech industries as an Engineering Manager in a series of
technical leadership roles for various Fortune 100 companies such as Genentech,
Merck, and Pfizer. Since 2011 Kimberly has helped Black Girls CODE grow from a
local organization serving only the Bay Area, to an international organization
with seven chapters across the U.S. and in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Sarah Guthals
Sarah Guthals received her PhD from UCSD in Computer Science specializing in
CS Education in 2014. During graduate school she built the beta version of
CodeSpells, a 3D immersive video game designed to teach children to code
through playing a wizard and writing "spells".
She went on to co-found ThoughtSTEM, a company that builds software (e.g.
LearnToMod), curriculum, and pedagogies for teaching children to code and
empowering K-12 teachers to teach their students.
She has written two books around modding Minecraft, launched a Coursera
course for teachers interested in teaching coding and was recently named Forbes
30 under 30 in Science. Her passion is making coding accessible to everyone,
with the goal of making it a basic literacy.
