Editor’s note: Code Your Dreams was recognized this year with the ISACA Technology for Humanity Award “for leadership in empowering the next generation of civic-minded technologists.” Find out more about the impact Code Your Dreams is making in this Q&A with Brianne Caplan, founder and executive director of Code Your Dreams, and submit a nomination for the 2023 ISACA Awards here.
ISACA Now: What type of programs does Code Your Dreams offer, and what has the impact been?
We believe that technology education should be a human right. It unlocks access to sustainable career pathways and can impact families and communities for generations to come. At Code Your Dreams, we equip both K-12 and adult students with the skills and resources to innovate technology solutions for our world. We bring our curriculum, instructors, and technology to schools, community centers, prisons, detention centers and re-entry centers across the country and internationally. We’ve taught over 600 classes with over 4,000 alumnae in tracks including app development, web development, and data science and analytics. In addition to getting trained with these important workforce skills, our students have built impactful technology to help solve some of our community’s most pressing challenges, including healthcare, human rights, environment, gun violence, mental health and more.
ISACA Now: How gratifying is it to support young people who are interested in coding and technology?
t is gratifying beyond words. Our students bring in their unique perspectives, experiences and identities to our classrooms. They have their own understanding of problems and technologies that affect people’s lives. It has taught me that anyone can create big change in the world—whether it’s a kindergarten student building a mindfulness app for her class, a sixth grade student building a safety app to help his neighbors affected by gun violence, a ninth grade student building a game-based platform to encourage neighborhood recycling programs, or an adult student building a website to connect and support people affected by addiction.
ISACA Now: How can Code Your Dreams make an impact in the tech workforce from a diversity and inclusion standpoint?
It’s not a secret that diversity and representation matter in the tech industry. We need intersectional voices and ideas to ensure that businesses are creating equitable solutions for our society. At Code Your Dreams, we’re developing a pipeline of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds to enter into technology careers. We do this by equipping students to enter into fields such as software engineering, data science and analytics, product management, UX research and design, sales and marketing, and entrepreneurship. Students are exposed to these different fields and find their spark in different parts of the technology development process. Students are also exposed to technology professionals that they can relate to and look up to as role models. As an organization, we aim to get as many students as possible into this pipeline and provide quality support and resources to keep students interested in and excited about technology career pathways.
ISACA Now: What has surprised you most about the way Code Your Dreams has evolved since its beginning?
The most surprising thing about Code Your Dreams’ evolution is how moldable our curriculum has become to fit the needs of students from different backgrounds and with different learning needs. Whether it’s a public school or university in Illinois, a private school in Kenya, a prison or women’s re-entry center in Maine, or a community center in Ohio, Code Your Dreams’ student-centered and project-based curriculum is flexible to meet the needs in all of these environments. We’re excited to make our learning management system public later this year so that more teachers and community members can take advantage of the resources that we’ve built.
ISACA Now: You have a new partnership with the ISACA Chicago Chapter—how did that come about, and what will that entail?
We were honored to accept ISACA’s global Technology for Humanity award this year. During the gala reception in New Orleans, I was amazed to see the incredible passion and dedication from so many ISACA leaders. One of those leaders was Ramona Ratiu, president of the ISACA Chicago Chapter. We immediately bonded while discussing issues of equity and mentorship in tech education. We also bonded over our mutual dedication to support our youth’s dreams and identities in Chicago. As a result, I’m thrilled to announce our partnership. Together, we are running a new app development program for middle school students in Chicago. Our students are “coders for good” and “designers for good” this summer as they ideate, design, develop and market new apps that solve big problems in our world. We’re so grateful and excited for this partnership, and we can’t wait to see our students’ final showcase in August.