She Codes: Alumna Promotes Learning Computer Science for Girls, Minorities

Jacobs School alumna Jennifer Arguello will be in the spotlight Friday, Aug. 9 at the SheCodes conference in Mountain View, Calif. She earned her bachelor's of computer science at UC San Diego in 2000 and serves on the CSE Alumni Board.

She also is a co-founder of the Latino Startup Alliance and serves on the National Board of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. She worked on Microsoft's Xbox Kinect and for Mozilla. So she is a perfect fit for SheCodes, a conference that brings together the most talented women in tech from around the San Francisco Bay Area. Arguello will talk about working with youth and her passion for computer science education in kindergarten through 12th-grade.

Arguello also recently appeared in a video for Black Girls Code, an organization that aims to give women, and girls, of color the tools to become inventors, leaders and creators in the tech world. Here's a part of her story:

"I'm one of those freaks of nature that learned how to code at 6. I'm a self-taught coder. But here is the problem: I didn't see code until I was in high school. From 6 to 16, nothing."
"What's really important about Black Girls CODE, what's really important about having diversity in technology, is that if you don't have it, you will get products, you will have technology, that is built for the majority. And what is that in the U.S.? White males."

Learn more about SheCodes here:  http://shecodesconf.com/
Watch the Black Girls CODE video here:  http://youtu.be/8F7BK_8vUj4