Looking Back On Our 2021 STEM Summer Diversity Programs
Goldman Sachs is proud to be a corporate sponsor of three high school technology programs as part of our Diversity STEM Summer Programs: All Star Code, Girls Who Code, and Kode With Klossy.
Girls Who Code
Over the past nine years, the firm’s Women in Engineering (WE) affinity network has sponsored Girls Who Code (GWC). This summer, the firm virtually hosted 60 high school girls, two teachers and four teaching assistants as part of the program which ran from July 12 to July 23. Two days into the program, the students heard from Elizabeth Byrnes, head of Global Investment Research Engineering and co-head of Americas WE, who provided an overview of Goldman Sachs, the role of Engineering at the firm and her career journey. On the last day, students showcased their final project websites built using CSS, HTML and JavaScript—a direct result of their learnings from this two-week program. Projects focused on addressing various social issues such as climate change, helping unhoused people, gender inequality, mental health, and beyond. These projects reflected the students’ hard work, creativity and passion for technology.
Kode With Klossy
For the first time this summer, WE partnered with Kode With Klossy (KWK), the nonprofit founded by supermodel and entrepreneur Karlie Kloss, to sponsor 60 scholars, four instructors and six instructor assistants over a two-week web development curriculum. The virtual program ran from July 26 to August 6. Laura Takacs, global head of Human Capital Management Engineering and co-head of the Americas WE network, kicked off the program. She provided the students with an introduction to the firm, shared how impactful Engineering is to the firm’s functions and highlighted her career trajectory. On the third day of the program Lisa Opoku, chief operating officer of Engineering, joined the KWK Speaker Series for a TechSetters episode. Lisa was joined by Karlie Kloss and more than 500 young women who learned about Lisa’s path to becoming chief operating officer of Engineering and her advice for navigating a career in the technology industry. Karlie Kloss also joined co-CIOs George Lee and Marco Argenti, alongside Liz Byrnes at the mentor drop-in sessions on Thursday, August 5. On the last day of the program, students presented their final projects focused on global issues such as climate change, the refugee crises, and more, to a panel of Goldman Sachs engineers.
All Star Code
Over the past six years, the Black Engineers (BE) Network and Engineering Hispanic and LatinX Networks (EHLN) have collaborated to sponsor the All Star Code (ASC) Summer Intensive flagship program coding experience, focused on teaching computer science to Black and Latino high school students. This year’s program was hosted virtually and began on Monday, July 12. The 39 students learned about the foundational principles of JavaScript/HTML, Cloud Computing, APIs, and databases and met with Goldman Sachs mentors to develop essential core skills including networking and goal setting. On July 28, the students attended an Ask Me Anything session with Frederick Baba, a managing director in the Systematic Market Making and Interest Rate Product Group, and Nonso Ogbonna, chief solutions architect for Digital Strategy. On Thursday, August 19, the students delivered their final projects at Demo Day, where Hari Moorthy, global head of Transaction Banking, delivered the keynote address. Hari challenged the students to dream big, aim high, and seize every opportunity that comes their way. Demo Day was the culmination of the program and provided the students the opportunity to pitch and present their final projects to their peers, mentors, teachers, and parents.
Goldman Sachs is proud to sponsor these programs year-after-year.