Happy Pride Month! At Girls Who Code, we want to celebrate our LGBTQ+ staff, students, and community members, not just in June, but every single day. Join us as we shine a light on amazing queer women and nonbinary leaders who are changing the face of tech. Here are a few trailblazers you need to know about!
Arlan Hamilton is the first Black, queer woman to create her own venture capital firm, which she built while she was experiencing housing insecurity.. In 2015, She launched Backstage Capital which invests in high-potential founders who are women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Backstage has raised over $15 million and supported over 160 startup companies.
DJ_DAVE is a queerâidentifying, experimental electronicâpop artist, DJ, and producer who makes her music using code â a genre otherwise known as algorave.
She is one of the first artists to combine live coding and DJ mixing simultaneously in her shows.
Dr. Alex Hanna is the Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). Her work focuses on the data used in emerging computational technologies and how this data can exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequalities. She holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics, as well as a PhD. Hanna, a trans woman of color, states that her identity influences her research, which currently addresses algorithmic fairness and the origins of data used in training machine learning models. Previously, Hanna was a senior research scientist on Googleâs Ethical AI Team, but she left to further advocate for diversity and equity in AI.
