Author: Audrey Pe

Because current Philippine curriculum is lacking in computer science education, Audrey taught herself to program using available online resources. As she pursued her interest in a technology career, she found very little support and no female role models within the industry. While attending tech conferences and hackathons Audrey met other girls with similar interests for the first time. At 15 she assembled a team of students and founded Women in Technology (WiTech). WiTech is a community organization that educates, inspires and empowers youth to break gender barriers and use technology to make positive differences in society. They hosted the Philippines’ first student-led conference for female students in tech and travelled to Marawi, a neglected area in the Southern Philippines that was bombed in 2017, to teach basic programming skills to teens living in evacuation centres. WiTech also provided them with used laptops and curated tech education modules for their school. At both the 2017 ASEAN Youth Entrepreneurship Carnival in Manila and the 2018 UN Youth Collab in Bangkok, Audrey further promoted the movement of women in technology while networking and developing future projects. She plans to continue promoting tech equality and working to launch future outreach projects across the Philippines. Audrey’s goal is to make tech education accessible to youth across the world so that they can create and innovate regardless of their gender or socioeconomic background. She is currently on a gap year before attending Stanford University in the fall of 2020.