|
Regina Honu is a software developer who started the first coding academy for young adults in West Africa.
She was born in Kumasi, Ghana. From a young age, she felt pressure from her parents to become a doctor. But she always had an eye for problem-solving and exploring what computers could do. In secondary school, she also developed a love for science after watching a movie about rockets being built. But her teachers discouraged her dream for building spaceships and told her girls aren’t meant to do such things.
Source: Ashoka.org
But she didn’t take that lightly -- she excelled in school and earned a one-year exchange program in Norway which inspired her to think big. After that, she started college, where she focused on computer science.
She finished school and started working at banks and eventually moving up the ranks and improving her skills. She used her computer knowledge to help develop e-banking systems from scratch. She experienced discrimination here after noticing she was continuously passed over for promotions. When she confronted her superiors, they said the men in the office would not take her seriously if she was promoted, so she wasn’t. She threatened to leave because of this and was then offered a double promotion and a pay raise, but realized she wanted more out of her career than working for a place where she wasn’t respected.
Eventually, she left and started her own consulting company, Soronko Solutions.
In 2012, she created Tech Needs Girls as a way to encourage young women to get involved in technology. The program specifically helped girls in Ghana and used a specialized curriculum to teach girls how to code. To date, it has trained more than 2,000 young women.
As a part of the program, she gives each girl a baseline assessment and follows their progress to ensure they all go at their own pace. She does a lot of follow up and baseline assessments to measure a student’s changes. She also interviews the student’s parents and teachers to see if any changes in personality or confidence as the girls learn.
Her work has received national attention and she’s been featured on numerous news outlets including CNN, the BBC and Al Jazeera.
| 
