20 years in IT: story of a woman who launched an IT school for girls from scratch

Many stereotypes have not become obsolete even in the 21st century. So, the opinion that IT is an exclusively male sphere exists to this day. However, there are women who break stereotypes and prove that IT does not choose gender. One of these women is the founder of the itgirlschool.com IT school for girls, Alisa Tsvetkova, who in an interview with IT Park spoke about her professional path, the launch of the school and shared her opinion on how to increase the presence of girls in the industry.

—Tell us about yourself and your professional activity.

— I am 35 years old. I am originally from Moscow, now I live in Batumi (Georgia). I have been programming and developing web applications since the age of 14. I have a specialized secondary and higher education. At the age of 33, I started my own business - a programming school for girls, and at the same time a start-up of an educational platform.

— How did you get into the IT and how many years have you been working in this sector?

- Once, at a young age, I came across the book "Web Design", the author is Dmitry Kirsanov, with which I began my journey into web development. But in general, I can say that I was very lucky: my dad is an IT specialist. From childhood I saw how his eyes sparkled when working on the computer, how passionate he was about his job. Our whole house was full of equipment, computers, and it was simply impossible not to fall in love with it all. I decided that I wanted to connect my life with computers at a young age.

I’m working in IT since I was 16, nearly 20 years I have been engaged in the work I love.

— How did you come up with the idea to open an IT school for girls? What inspired you to do this?

— I founded the IT school in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. It happened quite by accident: my friend advised me to take part in the Impact Hub accelerator for women's social projects. As part of the 90 days challenge program, they helped me launch the school, which has grown noticeably since then. We started with 15 students, and now we have 450 students.

The situation itself inspired me to launch such a school: I have been a programmer for most of my life, and almost all my life there was a huge bias towards guys. When I studied at a university or worked, for example, we had 2 girls for 50 guys.

Since the age of 18 I have also been teaching. In recent years, I began to notice that the picture is changing: guys and girls 50/50 come to me, as a tutor, but this bias is still observed in the work. Then I began to understand why. At some point, I found information that girls go to technical subjects if they see that the teacher is a woman, that is, girls need role models. Moreover, when I was thinking about what kind of startup to launch, I wanted to make a project where women's rights are respected, and something that would allow achieving fairness in the IT sphere and in wages.

— What difficulties did you face in the process of launching the school?

— Since I am a programmer and teacher, not a businessperson, I did not understand anything in marketing or sales, and I had to learn everything from scratch. Naturally, then there was no financial opportunity to hire some cool team, I did everything myself.

However, after, when everything began to improve and there was an increase, in February problems began with blocking the card and Instagram. For several months, we managed to save the business, but we were able to grow again in July-August.

- The IT-sphere has traditionally been considered male dominated. How is this tendency changing now?

- Now there are more and more projects for women in the IT, there are more women in the industry, and this is great.

Almost always at all conferences, the speakers are men. But there are great companies like Google that are making a difference, launching initiatives like the Women in Tech Ambassador, where women are invited to be speakers. By the way, I am also one of the participants of this program. This is a big important initiative, and fortunately, Google is not the only company that launches this kind of projects.

— What needs to be done in order to increase the presence of girls in the IT industry?

— Oh, good question. I think we need to show more that we girls and women in IT exist. It is also necessary to change in principle the sphere of education and upbringing of children. This is what I mean: boys are bought Lego, constructors, robots, sent to robotics courses, and girls are bought dolls and told “you should be a mother and mistress, here is a toy kitchen for you.” Naturally, then we see girls less often in any tech industries.

If we change the principles of education, that is, we will not force girls to play with dolls if she wants a car, then we will have a presence of girls in the IT industry and in general in all technological areas, whether it be mining, aviation, oil and gas industries, will increase significantly.

— What measures should the state take to support girls and women in IT?

- First of all, we need to make equal salaries for men and women. Educational courses cost a lot of money. Men with their large salaries can easily afford to pay for such courses, but women with their small salaries cannot.

— How do you think the sector is developing in the world?

— The IT-sphere is developing very actively, especially in the last five years. Development is taking place in the field of artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and in general in all directions.

But the problem is that now there is a huge shortage of specialists in all countries and in all areas. Of course, schools like mine are trying to close this shortage of specialists.

–Tell us about your plans for the coming years. How do you want to develop the school?

— We will work on increasing the directions and the number of students. Now we have three professions: frontend, backend and mobile development. There are plans to open new areas: testing, project management and design. That is, now our priority is to expand the range of professions that will allow women to earn money remotely and make good money working in the IT field.

- What advice would you give to girls?

- Be brave. This is the most important and crucial thing. Very often in the text of vacancies they write absolutely crazy things like  “you must be able to fly a helicopter, a submarine and a space rocket, speak 10 languages, etc.” In fact, employers agree for much less, but girls see these crazy demands and are afraid that they are not eligible, that they are not good enough. They don't even try out of fear.

A woman responds to a vacancy only if she is 100% confident in herself and her abilities. Therefore, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to be brave and not be afraid to try and take risks!