DUBLIN, Ohio — "Girls Who Code" is a school club that has been offered in the U.S. and around the world since 2012, but with Intel moving in, it could start paving the way for the company’s future female workforce in Ohio. 

What You Need To Know

  • ‘Girls Who Code’ is a school club that serves girls in the US and internationally

  • It’s designed to close the gender gap in technology and computer science

  • While ‘Girls Who Code’ has been around since 2012, Davis Middle School offered the club since 2016

Thirteen year olf Ruby Elliott is scrambling for her laptop to start coding.

Coding is one of her strong suits.

“I’ve always been like a pretty creative person,” she said. “I love art, and I’m also super into math. It is fun being able to tell a computer to do something and something cool happens.”

She’s part of the ‘Girls who Code’ at Davis Middle School in Dublin. The club is designed to close the gender gap in technology and computer science. 

Elliott said coding runs in her family. 

“I basically grew up with my dad, always coding on his computer for work,” she said. “And I guess it was kind of like ingrained in my brain.”

Cary Lindberg is the club’s adviser at the school. 

With Intel moving in, Lindberg explained exposing girls to the tech industry is more important than ever. 

“There’s a lot of jobs opening up as Intel is coming in,” she said, “and so, especially with it being so close to us, there are going to be more opportunities for them to join that workforce and fill those jobs. And if they didn’t see themselves in it, it wouldn’t even be on their radar of something that they could do.”

“Girls Who Code” is also about breaking gender norms, which is especially important to Elliott. 

“Throughout the entire history of the world, women in general, have been like very much pushed aside,” Elliott said, “but having a club where it’s all girls, doing things that usually you see men doing, I feel like it’s an important thing because we can do what they can do too and better sometimes.”

While ‘Girls Who Code’ has been around since 2012, Davis Middle School offered the club since 2016. 

The club said it’s on track to help close the gender gap in entry-level tech jobs by the year 2030.