Vanessa Hurst

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Bio

Vanessa Hurst is the founder and CEO of CodeMontage, where coders engage in open source projects to improve their skills and the world. Vanessa co-founded and advises Girl Develop It, a nonprofit that empowers women to learn software development by providing low-cost, judgment-free learning opportunities and a supportive community. Girl Develop It teaches over 1,000 women per month in person across 50+ U.S. chapters and has built a community of over 60,000 since its founding in 2010. Vanessa also co-founded WriteSpeakCode, an action-oriented conference for women developers to improve their careers and visibility in thought leadership. Previously, she founded and ran Developers for Good, a meetup of technologists and social impact leaders in NYC.

Vanessa advocates for every person to have the opportunity to learn to code. In 2013, she starred in the Code.org film, What Most Schools Don't Teach, which reached over 20 million viewers and inspired over 3 million people to start coding. Code.org's subsequent campaign, the Hour of Code, has enabled over 100 million students learn to code. Vanessa also serves as a mentor for the Academy for Software Engineering High School through iMentor and advises a number of social ventures and early-stage startups.

Vanessa is a TEDx speaker and frequently speaks about open source, data, continuous learning, and technology for good. Her work in technology education and social change has appeared on the TODAY show, NPR, Al Jazeera America, Entrepreneur, The New York Times, Fast Company, and other media. Previously, Vanessa wrangled data at Paperless Post, TheLadders, CapitalIQ, and WealthEngine. She holds a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Systems & Information Engineering from the University of Virginia.