As a freshman at Homestead High School, Amrita Venkatraman thought coding was “gross” and that she had no place in the programming world when she found herself in a basic Java class, instead of the introductory business course as she had hoped.
But in the years since that first day in computer science class, Amrita, now a senior, has become the first female president of the school’s programming club, won hackathons and created several Android applications.
Amrita believes that the tech world should be available to everyone.
“I’m trying to get more girls to join [the club]. There are maybe two girls out of 40 people right now. It’s challenging for me,” she says. “I’m trying to strike a balance because I don’t want to force them to do something they don’t want to do, but I also don’t want to hamper them from opportunities.”
Through programming club and other involvement in tech education around the Bay Area, Amrita is trying to bridge the gap between those who code and those who think they can’t.
“It’s a universal language,” she says. “You can build things that touch people’s lives in different ways. People always say that technology dehumanizes and people are glued to their screens, but I don’t particularly agree with that. I think technology creates empathy.”
Opening up opportunities to give programming and coding a try is very personal to Amrita in part because she developed her love for the skills almost by accident.
When Amrita found herself sitting in that Java programming class on the first day of school freshman year, she was unsure of her place in the group.
“The first day it was very, very intimidating. I was one of, like, three girls in a really big class,” she says. “And it wasn’t the fact that the guys were being mean or anything, I felt very overwhelmed because a lot of people came in with prior experience.”
But in due time, Amrita would discover that what was originally a scary programming class would soon turn into a lifelong passion.
“I came into the class without much experience, very scared. I was planning to drop the class within the first week,” Amrita admits. “But then my mom was like, ‘You know what? Just stick with it, maybe you’ll end up liking it.’ So I did and I’m really glad I did.”
Today Amrita specializes in creating apps for Android devices, and she’s created several apps with friends that have won awards in science fairs and, most recently, hackathons. Her programs have a bent toward helping others.
She has created an app that detects early onset Parkinson’s disease, and an app that can help students that are staying up late studying from dozing off. Most recently, she developed an app to prevent drunk driving that has been added to the Android app store.
The app, called Alert Driver, tests the user’s balance and cognitive skills with a series of game-like activities and compares the results to a baseline example that the user produced when the user was sober.
“I think that the reason Amrita does so well at these competitions is that she has a talent for figuring out how to use technology in new ways to help her community,” says John Shelby, programming club adviser and computer science teacher. “When she sees a problem that concerns her, she thinks, ‘Can I design a program that could fix that?”
The programming club meets once a week and often conducts workshops based on what members are interested in. According to Amrita, for the next few workshops, the club has a sort of “code Olympics” planned, where members compete against each other in coding competitions for prizes. Members also complete weekly challenge problems for a chance to get their name on the programming club leader board.
In addition to leading the club, Amrita is also a student ambassador for Technovation, an all girls programming competition in Silicon Valley, and is a director for StreetCode academy, a coding camp for youth in East Palo Alto.
“Amrita makes other students around her better through her interactions. Near the beginning of my AP computer science course, Amrita was dissatisfied with her test scores,” Shelby says. “Without my prompting, she began organizing study sessions at Starbucks before each test. Eventually, my entire third period was regularly showing up at Starbucks before every exam. I think her organization and intelligence, coupled with her super-friendly and approachable demeanor, is what got so many students on board.”
Her demeanor has helped try and bridge the gender gap in tech.
“The most significant barrier to girls’ participation in tech is perception,” says Allie Holmes, events and engagement director for Technovation, “Girls are high users of wireless technology, but they don’t often interact with wireless technology and think, ‘I can build something better.”
Holmes adds that roughly only 4 percent of female college freshmen in the United States declare their major as computer science.
“While this is a complex issue with outliers, the majority of messages that girls are exposed to reinforce the incorrect stereotype that computer science is not a career option for women,” Holmes says.
Amrita’s eagerness to help others can help break down those barriers. As a student ambassador for the Technovation program, Amrita assists by recruiting future technology innovators to the program and leading workshops to teach young women how they can make their ideas a reality through coding and entrepreneurship.
“Amrita doesn’t keep all of her coding power to herself. She is extremely motivated to share her knowledge and experience with others,” Holmes says.
Amrita realizes that there are hurdles to overcome in her mission.
“I’m trying to encourage girls, but if they don’t see it themselves it’s hard for them to realize what they’re capable of. Through Technovation and programming club, I want to give them a taste of what they can do,” she says. “Look at what’s possible. You can build something out of your imagination with a keyboard and a phone and a little bit of knowledge. You can build a website, you can build an app, you can build a video game, you can build whatever you want.”
Homestead principal Greg Giglio says that Amrita could add to the school’s computing legacy made famous by Homestead alums Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
“Programming is an important part of the Homestead history, not just here on campus but also in Silicon Valley and the world. So we are proud to have such a strong and positive role model for other females to follow,” Giglio says. “Especially with all the news and data about women being underrepresented in high tech, Amrita’s leadership brings a hopeful promise of how once again a student from Homestead may just change the world.”
