Teenage girls to be mentored by Britain’s top women tech leaders
Five teenage girls were yesterday named winners of a technology competition that will see them mentored by chief information officers from some of the UK’s leading companies.
The girls, aged 17-18, triumphed after they submitted ideas to the TechGirl competition on how technology can be used to improve schools and education. They will now be mentored by business leaders including Charlotte Baldwin, Global CIO, Costa Coffee and Deborah Haworth, CISO, Penguin Random House UK.
The competition was organised by thought leadership organisation HotTopics.ht, which has also announced as mentors Jacqui Lipinski, CIO, Royal College of Art; Belinda Finch, CIO, Three UK; and Christina Scott, CPO & CTO at OVO Energy.
In addition to being mentored, the winning quintet will also take part in work experience and as part of their prize receive ‘confidence training’ from award-winning TV presenter and journalist Bridgid Nzekwu.
Organisers hope that winning the contest will inspire the talented teenagers further and kickstart their careers into leadership positions within the tech sector.
Business leaders attending the Connecting Technology Leaders event at Tottenham Hotspur football stadium in north London on Tuesday, where the winners were announced, heard that entrants were encouraged to think critically on their own school experience to identify an important challenge facing the education system. They were also tasked with thinking creatively about how technology can be used to solve that problem.
The winners were announced as:
Gabriele Strimaityte, 17, of Thomas Alleyne's High School who submitted three ideas that could help solve the cost-of-living crisis using green energy.
Poppy Skinner, 18, of Wallington High School for Girls, whose idea was to create a pain-free model of hearing aids for teenagers.
Imogen Cooper, 17, of Denstone College, who wants to create a safeguarding app that can be used to report sexual misconduct to an administrator or committee in schools.
Precious Boateng, 17, of St Paul's Catholic School, came up with the idea of a student digital pad to tackle the issue of wasting substantial amounts of paper in schools.
Poppy Lenaghan, 17, of Hills Road Sixth Form College, whose idea was to create a digital language software that will help students around the world learn different foreign languages.
HotTopics.ht is a community of 15,000 global business leaders representing the world’s largest fastest growing companies. The next competition will run in April 2023.