>> Hi, I'm Lisa Martin on the ground with The Cube at Google Headquarters for the sixth annual CloudNOW Top Women and Cloud Awards event. Very excited to be joined by one of the award winners tonight, Alice Steinglass the President of Code.org. Congrats on the award and welcome to The Cube >> Thank you. >> It's great to have you here but first of all tell us about Code.Org. It's a pretty big organization and so what's it all about? >> Yeah, so our goal is that every student should have the opportunity to learn Computer Science. And we're focused on equity and diversity. I was surprised to learn that most schools today don't teach Computer Science. And it's not that most kids don't take Computer Science, it's that even if they wanted to most K12 schools today, the kid can't even take a Computer Science class if they want to. And this unfairly affects students of color, students in poor schools, they even have less of that opportunity today. And so our goal is that every school should offer Computer Science and every child should have the opportunity to take it. >> That's outstanding. How long have you been involved in Code.org and what inspires you to donate so much of your time to this organization? >> Yeah, so I joined about a little bit over two years ago. I'd been working in the tech industry for about 15 years, so I'd seen first hand what the lack of opportunity looks like and I was volunteering in my free time, helping out in schools and I just really wanted to make that my full-time job. I also think as a woman in Computer Science I remember walking into my first Computer Science class and it's a lecture hall with 500 people and you just feel like you're sort of in the wrong place. And it can be intimidating and I think especially when you don't know all the words or all the buzz words, you can feel like, I don't know what that word means, I don't know what BBS is right? So therefore I don't belong in Computer Science and it turns out, you don't need to know what a BBS is to do Computer Science. It's basically Reddit and nobody needs to know Reddit to do Computer Science. >> But that's a really great point that there's a lot of intimidation from kids at young ages, "Do I belong here?" "I like it but..." Like you said, there are things like acronyms that can intimidate someone. But some of the stats I was reading that 25% of students in the US have an account but this isn't just in the United States, you guys are doing some great things globally to get kids involved. So tell us a little bit about the global expansion of Code.org. >> Yeah, so almost half of our students come from around the world. And I think that it's not just about America, it's about every student deserves this opportunity. It's actually cool, most of our translation work, almost all of it is done by volunteer translators and we have organizations around the world like, Programa Il futuro in Italy who has translated all of our content into Italian and is working with the Italian Government and making it part of the national curriculum in Italy. Working with partners in Mexico and all over the world, who are doing great work and right here at home. You don't have to go far away, we're partnered with the Oakland School District which is right here. And we're partnered with San Francisco and all sorts of schools right here in America don't have that opportunity and so that's what we're focused on fixing. Because I was talking about, it's challenging when you don't know it and giving the students an opportunity to learn that in High School gives them the confidence to go and do this if they want to in college. I was lucky, I had a high school Computer Science class and I had a teacher who believed in me. And it makes a huge difference. >> Absolutely. >> So we want to give all students that chance. >> That confidence that you mentioned really is key. If you can just help, you probably think one person, just feel a little bit better that if, "Hey I don't know what this acronym is, how many other people don't know?" and that can just really build upon that. Something that I think is really cool that I've just learned about is the Hour of Code. Tell us about that because this is the perfect week to be talking about it. >> Yeah, you are interviewing me during CS education week. And one way you can celebrate CS education week is the Hour of Code. The Hour of Code has become an international movement. We've had tens of millions of students participating all over the world. This week alone there are over a 100,000 different Hour of Code events that are organized. You can see a map of them all over the world. An Hour of Code is a way of letting a student try Computer Science because I can tell you till I'm blue in the face that it's fun, or that it's interesting or that you can do it. But we see a much bigger impact when students actually try it. Last year we had thousands of students, which we measured. Questions like, I like Computer Science or I want to study Computer Science before and after they tried an Hour of Code. And what we saw was that it really makes a huge difference to try it. But you know the group that it mattered the most to? High school girls. High school girls. >> Fantastic. >> Yeah. Because they had this impression that Computer Science wasn't for them. But then after trying it, they said, "Oh you know what? It's not about sitting around and coding the Fibonacci Series." You can do that with code but you can also make apps and you can design websites and you can create things that have this creativity aspect and they wanted to go on and take it. Most students who do the Hour of Code go beyond the Hour of Code. And our goal with the Hour of Code is not to do one hour of code. One hour of code is not Computer Science, you're not going to learn that much right? >> Right. Getting your toe wet maybe? >> Yeah, get your toe wet. But the real goal is to help teacher teach years of Computer Science. To go from that to saying, "I can teach Computer Science." It's about the students and helping them take it and it's about the teachers and helping them teach it. Most of what we do at Code.org is helping teachers who never learned Computer Science when they went to school, learn Computer Science and learn how to teach it to their students. Because our teachers, they didn't learn Computer Science right? >> Right. >> And so we're asking them to teach the subject which is critically important in the 21st century. But it's a challenge. >> It is. Do you have any favorite stories of maybe a student or a teacher or both that tried this and their eyes were opened, "Wow, this is way more than I thought it was." >> So, there's a local teacher near Seattle, his name is Juan and he also was not a Computer Scientist. He had never taken Computer Science, I think he was teaching Political Science. I'm not sure, but I think that's what he was teaching. And he came to our workshops and he said, "Hey, I can do this. I can teach Computer Science." And we have one week workshops over the summer to help the teachers learn how to teach it. And curriculum and professional development that we provide for schools at no cost to the school to help them get started teaching Computer Science. And he took that leap and he did it. And he said, he went into one of his classes and he's in a district that is mostly under represented minorities and he looked at his class, and his class was all male and there were not very many of the under represented minorities in his class and he said, "Well, I've got to fix this." So he went out and he went to the choir class and he found this woman, our Sally and he said to her, "Hey why are you not in Computer Science right now?" and she said, "Oh, I don't know. I don't even like to sing." >> Oh my gosh, wow. >> So he just marched her right up. He got the form, he switched her over to Computer Science. He got her friend Daisy, he got a whole bunch of women in his class. And they loved it. And our Sally took that class and she kept going and she took Python. >> Wow. >> And she's applying to colleges right now and she wants to be a Computer Science major. >> That's amazing. Recruiting from choir. >> Right. And her parents never went to college. One of them never went to high school. And for her this is an opportunity to be part of all the things that we see in Silicon Valley. And I want to see her do it. >> Great story. Last question, the CloudNOW, and this is the Sixth Annual Top Women in Cloud Award. Congratulations on winning and how did you hear about this and what does it mean to you? >> I think it's a great award. I really love that CloudNOW is doing work to encourage equity and to encourage women in the tech space. I think that has a lot of synergy with the work we're doing at Code.org. Trying to encourage women and young women to be able to have this opportunity and be able to take these courses. And you know, it's okay if they don't want to go into the tech space. Most of them won't but if they have the opportunity to see these courses I hope some of them will be inspired and that when they are inspired they'll have that background, so they can. And for the other ones who go into all sorts of different fields, whether it be design or education or medicine, or marketing or who knows? Knowing how Computer Science works, I think is a critical set of skills for all people everywhere in this day and age. >> I agree. It'll be a great part of their foundation. Well, speaking of inspiration, you've been quite inspirational. Again congratulations Alice on the award and thank you for stopping by the Cube. >> Thanks. >> You've been watching the Cube a lot and we're on ground at Google for the six annual CloudNOW, Top Women in Cloud Awards. I'm Lisa Martin, thanks for joining. We'll be right back.