By building confidence, enhancing skills, and tapping into curiosity, uCodeGirl helps young girls chart pathways to technology careers. Girls are curious, creative and capable powerhouses. When they are confident in their abilities and are prepared with knowledge and skills they need, they can become leaders in whatever fields they choose.
Sometimes in life, you end up exactly where you are supposed to be but not necessarily where you planned to be. Bethlehem Gronneberg is a seasoned Software Engineer, an inspirational speaker, an author, and a social entrepreneur with a vision to exponentially expand the inclusion of diverse voices in the technology workforce. By providing opportunities and exposure to technical skills, entrepreneurial mindset and practical confidence-building experiences for teen girls, Bethlehem strives to be a global agent of change that fosters young women's affinity to the world of computational design thinking.
Referred to as the "unlikely STEMinist" by the Huffington Post article, Gronneberg is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of uCodeGirl, a non-profit designed to inspire, engage and equip teen girls so that they can confidently choose to forge a pathway to technology careers and engineer their world. Through year-round programming, Bethlehem explains her vision of uCodeGirl as follows:.
We will teach and guide you in acquiring technical skills. At the core of uCodeGirl is access to skills and opportunities. At uCodeGirl, we not only teach technical skills, but we also build a community of like-minded peers. We invite young girls to come as they are and provide them with visible and accessible female mentors, enabling them to create solutions to real-world problems and engineer their world. Software Engineer, Software Engineering Manager and a masters degree in Software Engineering from North Dakota State University, Bethlehem has become a social entrepreneur - an advocate for women in technology.
Gronneberg is the recipient of the prestigious Bush Foundation Leadership Fellowship. As a Bush Fellow, she is challenged to think big and to think different. Bethlehem is committed to bringing the real-world experience of software development to classrooms as a Computer Science instructor. Bethlehem has served on various councils and boards including the Fargo Chapter of the International Women in Technology.
