Growing up, Alaina Percival (B.I.S. ’02, MBA ’08) dreamt of becoming an astronaut. Impressed by her knack for math, her father encouraged her to also consider a career as an airline pilot. When it was time to explore colleges, Percival decided to stay in her home state of Georgia and take advantage of the HOPE Scholarship.
Growing up, Alaina Percival (B.I.S. ’02, MBA ’08) dreamt of becoming an astronaut. Impressed by her knack for math, her father encouraged her to also consider a career as an airline pilot. When it was time to explore colleges, Percival decided to stay in her home state of Georgia and take advantage of the HOPE Scholarship.
She was partial to a campus in or near Atlanta, where she’d been raised, and toured the usual prospects — the University of Georgia, Georgia State and Georgia Southern. And while Georgia Tech (where her father had gone) might have seemed like the obvious choice for a self-proclaimed left brain looking for an urban location, it was never part of the conversation. In fact, no one in the family even suggested a visit.
“Given the role I’m in now, the whole Georgia Tech thing seems really crazy,” Percival laughs.
That role is the chief executive officer of Women Who Code, an international nonprofit promoting women’s success in the technology space, which recently opened a new headquarters in Atlanta.
As a high school senior, Percival was blind to the prejudices that are now so clear to her. The notion that colleges and careers geared toward science, technology, engineering and mathematics are meant for men, she says, is part of a string of implicit biases women face every day — like lower salaries for the same skills, limited promotional opportunities, all-male leadership and a lack of female mentors.
Those biases might explain why women hold only 30 percent of technology-based jobs despite outnumbering men in the U.S. labor force (at 59 percent). They might also explain why, by 2020, as the tech industry demands more and more jobs, the nation will be one million workers shy of filling them.
Women aren’t just applying for and accepting technology positions in smaller numbers. Once hired, women are more likely than their male counterparts to leave jobs in tech. Still, a shortage of workers for an industry that touches almost every facet of our daily lives is only part of the problem. Women are grossly underrepresented at all levels of the tech food chain (especially in executive roles), and that lack of diversity is kryptonite for a field that runs on innovative thinking.
Percival and her team have been working for more than seven years to reconstruct the system.
“The thing is, women enter their careers just as excited as men and just as driven to succeed,” Percival says.
She’s proof that women dream of their careers with abandon, too.
SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE
A traditional degree in computer engineering (perhaps from Georgia Tech) may have given Percival a direct path to coding, but she’s not traditional. She cut her teeth in Georgia State’s bachelor of interdisciplinary studies program, which gave her the creative freedom to dabble in more than one major. It’s where she realized and embraced the enterprising spirit that would prove so invaluable down the line, and it’s where she learned you can chart your own course as long as you’re willing to brave it.
After graduating in 2002, Percival landed a fellowship with the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals (a year-long language immersion and internship program for recent graduates interested in international work), which took her to Germany to study in Nürnberg.
Soon after, she accepted a product management role with one of the world’s best-known athletic brands — Puma. She’d beat out every competitor in the European Union for a job that would normally favor a native applicant.
Percival isn’t the type to sit around and wait for opportunities. It comes as no surprise that in the midst of a successful career abroad, she continued to look for ways to make herself more marketable. An MBA, she thought, was just the ticket.
This time, Percival looked at Georgia Tech, but she decided her alma mater was the ideal fit. She wasn’t ready to make a permanent move back to the U.S., and through Georgia State’s former Global Partners MBA program, she’d have the chance to study across four continents.
“Given the experience I stood to gain, it just didn’t make sense to go anywhere else,” she says.
When she wrapped up the program, Percival was already champing at the bit for her next challenge. She wanted to move to San Francisco and get a taste of Silicon Valley. But with every job interview she landed came a rude awakening: Her employers wanted someone seasoned in technology.
So, she did what she says anyone can do — she taught herself to code.
“I knew I had to be able to speak the language,” she says.
Percival immersed herself in California’s entrepreneurial culture, taking on side tech projects that required coding expertise. She spent her nights and weekends growing a small community group of like-minded women with tech aspirations. They called it Women Who Code.
Eventually, Percival took on a role with a small startup. The job earned her the career credibility she needed to be taken seriously. When she went back into the marketplace, she had competing offers. She chose the company that allowed her the flexibility to keep advancing Women Who Code.
“We saw organizations supporting girls and women in college in early stages of learning to code, but the female tech professional was leaving the space at a rate of 56 percent,” Percival says. “There was no one focusing on keeping her in her career or helping her get to a more senior position. That’s where we decided to focus Women Who Code’s efforts.”
Percival’s time abroad had given her an invaluable glimpse into other countries’ work cultures. She found the barriers women face in tech aren’t limited to the U.S. and that her mission had to be global.
In the seven years since its inception, Women Who Code has evolved into a powerful operation with local networks in 60-plus cities across more than 20 countries. Members have access to the organization’s leadership programs, coding resources, job listings in leadership capacities, opportunities for global networking, scholarships, free tickets to conferences, and the chance to be nominated and recognized by other members. Women Who Code produces more than 1,700 free or inexpensive technical events each year, which shakes out to about four events around the globe every day.
Women Who Code CEO Alaina Percival (left) and Chief Leadership Officer Joey Rosenberg (MBA '09) at work in their new Atlanta headquarters.
Women Who Code CEO Alaina Percival (left) and chief leadership officer Joey Rosenberg (MBA '09) at work in their new Atlanta headquarters.
LEADING LADY
Women like Percival have fought their way into the tech industry, but there’s a huge bottleneck.
The industry’s future, she explains, depends not just on our ability to fill jobs but also to remain competitive by generating new ideas — something that requires diversity of thought. It isn’t enough to simply hire more women. To level the playing field and create gender parity in tech, the industry has to undergo a complete culture change.
Women Who Code’s chief leadership officer Joey Rosenberg (MBA ’09) says it’s all about recognizing the problem and establishing new industry standards.
In the tech world, visible female leaders are few and far between. Women Who Code’s data show that 70 percent of U.S.-based startups feature entirely male boards of directors, and more than half have no women in executive roles.
“Companies need to be intentional and acknowledge that individuals have bias — period,” says Rosenberg. “The more you can do to remove bias in your hiring and promotional practices, project allocation and leadership opportunities, the more you’ll see people from underrepresented groups in top tiers of leadership.”
With fair and balanced work environments, more women won’t just enter the industry. They’ll want to remain in it and progress. They’ll become role models for other women, who may not have even considered careers in tech. That’s when the real change can begin, Rosenberg says.
And everyone wins. Women Who Code’s data indicate that companies who staff more women in leadership roles see a 34 percent higher return on investment. And when women earn higher salaries, they reinvest 90 percent of their income back into their families and communities.
For Percival, it’s not a lack of confidence that’s keeping women from climbing the leadership ranks.
“Everybody points to confidence, but I have a beef with that,” she says. “Most of the time, women don’t doubt they can perform leadership functions. The problem is their mindset. We have to almost trick women into stepping into leadership positions, forcing the mental shift.”
Percival’s got the perfect example for how easily that mental shift can occur, even subconsciously. A Women Who Code member was attending an event in San Francisco, and the leader hadn’t arrived yet. Because this member had attended several previous events and knew the drill, she walked to the front of the room and kicked things off. Without even realizing it, Percival says, that woman had instantly become a leader. She’d seamlessly taken command of the event, and the other attendees didn’t question her credibility.
“It took moving to the front of the room and having the platform to be able to make that step,” Percival says.
That message is at the core of Women Who Code’s leadership programs, which offer members professional development training. The programs illuminate the five qualities Women Who Code insists aspiring leaders (regardless of gender) should adopt in order to succeed: Learn the highest technical skills, inspire others to achieve their career goals, share knowledge, encourage peers to take on leadership roles, and commit to continuously learn and take chances.
“In our leadership programs, you typically achieve within one year what you would likely achieve over the next three to five years of your career,” Percival says.
Soon, Women Who Code will introduce its leadership programs to companies, allowing them to develop and train employees internally.
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
The WomenLead program at Georgia State — an undergraduate initiative to drive leadership among female students, particularly in the field of tech — is arming women with the executive savvy and workplace insight to give them an edge in translating their degrees into careers. What began as a single course offering in business leadership has evolved into a four-course series that also includes science, policy and politics.
WomenLead members benefit from opportunities to connect with key players in the community and build personal relationship with mentors. Students are given a series of assessments that identify their personal strengths and help them understand which are most valued by employers.
Through the Signature Experience project, students apply course knowledge and incorporate experiential learning, which culminates in a final project evaluated by a faculty member.
That project is something computer science major Natsaid Ndebele (B.S. ’19) found especially impactful.
“I still have my Personal Leadership Strategy poster hanging in my room,” says the BlackRock Founders scholar and recipient of Google’s Women Techmakers Scholarship.
“That assignment was like a reckoning for me of my values, strengths and vision for myself. It was a real moment of reflection.”
LEADING
BY EXAMPLE
The WomenLead program at Georgia State — an undergraduate initiative to drive leadership among female students, particularly in the field of tech — is arming women with the executive savvy and workplace insight to give them an edge in translating their degrees into careers. What began as a single course offering in business leadership has evolved into a four-course series that also includes science, policy and politics.
WomenLead members benefit from opportunities to connect with key players in the community and build personal relationship with mentors. Students are given a series of assessments that identify their personal strengths and help them understand which are most valued by employers.
Through the Signature Experience project, students apply course knowledge and incorporate experiential learning, which culminates in a final project evaluated by a faculty member.
That project is something computer science major Natsaid Ndebele (B.S. ’19) found especially impactful.
“I still have my Personal Leadership Strategy poster hanging in my room,” says the BlackRock Founders scholar and recipient of Google’s Women Techmakers Scholarship.
“That assignment was like a reckoning for me of my values, strengths and vision for myself. It was a real moment of reflection.”
LEADING
BY EXAMPLE
The WomenLead program at Georgia State — an undergraduate initiative to drive leadership among female students, particularly in the field of tech — is arming women with the executive savvy and workplace insight to give them an edge in translating their degrees into careers. What began as a single course offering in business leadership has evolved into a four-course series that also includes science, policy and politics.
WomenLead members benefit from opportunities to connect with key players in the community and build personal relationship with mentors. Students are given a series of assessments that identify their personal strengths and help them understand which are most valued by employers.
Through the Signature Experience project, students apply course knowledge and incorporate experiential learning, which culminates in a final project evaluated by a faculty member.
That project is something computer science major Natsaid Ndebele (B.S. ’19) found especially impactful.
“I still have my Personal Leadership Strategy poster hanging in my room,” says the BlackRock Founders scholar and recipient of Google’s Women Techmakers Scholarship.
“That assignment was like a reckoning for me of my values, strengths and vision for myself. It was a real moment of reflection.”
THE END GAME
With an eight-member board and 22 advisers — and an almost 20-person team cranking away in a shiny, new office in Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland neighborhood — Women Who Code is a far cry from its early community group days in Silicon Valley.
Among Women Who Code’s 167,000 members worldwide, 50 percent are engineers, and 8 percent are executives. Five percent work in data science, 7 percent in management and 4 percent in design. And 26 percent fill other roles as solution architects, consultants, students and more. Eighty percent report that participating in Women Who Code has helped them advance in their careers.
The numbers speak volumes, but the individual success stories mean the most to Percival and her team.
“There’s the director in Mexico City whose salary increased 200 percent in one year after working with Women Who Code and the leader in Toronto who climbed two steps on the career ladder in less than one year of being a leader,” Percival says.
Percival’s own success and the impact she’s had on others has earned her a spot on Georgia State’s latest 40 Under 40 list. It honors distinguished alumni who have made significant contributions to their industries.
When Percival talks about Women Who Code’s ultimate goal, her answer is surprising. Then it makes perfect sense.
“We want to put ourselves out of business,” she says.
That’ll happen when there’s a balanced system that equally supports men and women in technology — when we don’t need an organization to fight for what’s fair.
Everybody points to confidence, but I have a beef with that. Most of the time, women don’t doubt they can perform leadership functions. The problem is their mindset. We have to almost trick women into stepping into leadership positions, forcing the mental shift.
Everybody points to confidence, but I have a beef with that. Most of the time, women don’t doubt they can perform leadership functions. The problem is their mindset. We have to almost trick women into stepping into leadership positions, forcing the mental shift.
Photos by Gregory Miller