>> From Santa Clara, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE! Covering Technovation's World Pitch 2018. Now, here's Sonia Tagare. >> Hi, welcome back, I'm Sonia Tagare here with theCUBE in Santa Clara, California covering Technovation's World Pitch Summit 2018, a pitch competition in which girls develop mobile apps in order to create positive change in the world. This week 12 finalists are competing for their chance to win the coveted gold or silver scholarships. With us today we have Tara Chklovski, the Founder and CEO of Iridescent, Tara thank you so much for being on. >> My pleasure. >> So can you tell us a little bit more about Technovation? What's the event about? >> Yeah, so Technovation is the worlds largest technology program for girls and we inspire them to find problems in their communities and actually create mobile apps and launch startups to solve these problems. And so we operate in 115 countries. >> Wow! >> This year we had about 20 thousand girls register for the program, and right now we see about girls and student ambassadors, regional ambassadors, mentors from 15 countries. So some of the countries are: Nigeria, India, Mexico, Brazil, Ethiopia, Palestine, Spain, and of course, the US and Canada. >> That's wonderful. >> And I think I may be missing a couple countries. >> So, could you tell me more about Iridescent and how Iridescent is involved in Technovation? >> Yeah, totally. So, Iridescent is the parent non-profit and we started in 2006, our mission is to empower underserved communities, especially girls and women to become innovators and creators of technology and engineering, and so it requires them feeling that they have a place at the table and being empowered to actually create new solutions, and not just be the users of solutions. >> That's wonderful. Can you tell us some success stories from past winners? >> Yeah, totally. So Technovation is unusual because it's 100 hour, pretty robust, almost like a bootcamp where, you don't need to have any prior knowledge of computer science or entrepreneurship, and you go through and have a completely finished product. And so, in the early years, in say 2010, the winners of the New York regional competition actually created an Uber-like app. And this was before Uber was actually known as a ride sharing. And a team from I think the Bay area created a Pinterest-like app. And so these girls are ahead of the times because, I mean everybody knows teenagers are ahead of their time, and girls are very active users of technology, and this puts into their hands that they become creators. But some of the success stories, one of our biggest one is Emma Yang, she was named like the top 10 under 10 to watch out for, but she created an app for her grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer's, and she could, it would help memory training. And recently, she was actually featured in Apple's WWDC Conference when Tim Cook played the video showcasing the developer and their families, and so she was one of them on the video, so, we felt incredibly proud that we were the ones to bring her into technology. >> That's wonderful. So can you tell me more about how Technovation is helping these girls? >> Yeah, so Technovation again is unusual, because it's not like we're going to cram a whole bunch of coding and programming down your throats, it's rather, first the question is, find the problem that you're passionate about in your community, and then, oh by the way, did you know you could use technology to solve that problem? And so that real world application is very important for a new newcomer to the field, and so we bring thousands and thousands of young girls who would never dream about going into computer science into this field, so, just to give some numbers, annually, we have about 64 thousand undergraduates in computer science as a country, and only 10 thousand of them are women. >> Wow. >> And so just to give you a sense of the scale of Technovation, we have about 12 thousand Technovation alumni now in college and in the workforce. Every year we add about five thousand girls, and so that's 50% of our national output of the number of computer science graduates, right, like undergraduate women. And so we are significantly moving the needle, but it's taken a long time, I mean, this is our 13th year. And so that is the message that to build this community of young women leaders and entrepreneurs, they need to see more like themselves and so it takes time to get to get to that starting with a few girls, and so yeah, this year we have 20 thousand. >> How do you think the Girls in tech community is evolving as a whole? >> I think the coding community is becoming very, is becoming, it's becoming a movement, it's taken 10 years, and so I think you can see the change in the AP computer science results this year, you're seeing more and more girls becoming interested in computer science. But again, there's a big problem of access still, I mean, low income groups do not have access to, to coding programs in their communities, and I think, there's room for us to improve and add there. I think the Girls in tech community is vibrant, in Silicon Valley, but Silicon Valley is a tiny place in the world, as you can see, right? So I think, yes it's there, but we are very small, there's a lot of room, and there's a lot of room for other organizations to take up the challenge. >> That's awesome. So, last question: What advice would you give for girls who are interested in technology? >> I would say, find a problem that you care about, and find a mentor, I would say sign up for Technovation, because that really has all the elements and the support systems that you need, it's much more than an hour of code. You really need to see all elements of what technology can bring, and the change that you can enable. So I would definitely say yeah, sign up for Technovation, because it helps you make a real change in the world. >> That's awesome, thank you so much for being on theCUBE today. >> My pleasure. >> It's so inspiring what you're doing. >> Thank you! >> Thanks for being here, we're at Technovation's World Pitch Summit 2018, stay tuned for more. (bubbly music)