Meet the nonprofit working to get more underrepresented women into tech

Brenda Thornton wasn’t looking to change her life, she just wanted to go on a free trip.

In 2019, then a junior at Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, Thornton decided to join an after-school program run by local nonprofit HYPE. It focuses on getting underrepresented girls into tech by teaching them to code, but Thornton joined because she wanted to go overseas.

“I didn’t know those were the terms and conditions, but I was told a free trip,” Thornton laughed.

Then came the pandemic. The international excursion was canceled but Thornton stayed in the HYPE program and learned how to code websites. That experience made her want to go deeper.

“I wanted to look beyond just the software and the website. I wanted to be able to actually know the inner workings of a computer,” Thornton told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in March at the inaugural HYPE About Tech conference.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Taking part in HYPE’s programs ended up changing the trajectory of Thornton’s life. She initially thought she’d study health care after high school, but now, the 21-year-old is about to graduate from the University of Georgia with a degree in computer systems engineering and a minor in computer science. In September, she starts a job as an engineer at Boeing.

When Kristina Newton, a former tech consultant, founded HYPE in 2017 she hoped she’d be able to make an impact on girls’ lives. She had grown disillusioned with consulting and wanted to do something that felt more purposeful.

After she quit her consulting job, she traveled around the world for a year, volunteering with different nonprofits.

“I came back to the States after a year and started realizing that there are a lot of other women who had stories like me — leaving technology, not having mentors,” said Newton.

She also started working with educational nonprofits in Atlanta and saw the disparities of what students in well-off areas had access to versus the resources available to students in schools in poorer areas.

From that combination of experiences, HYPE was born. Newton is on a mission to empower historically underrepresented girls to thrive as leaders in tech.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Women have been woefully underrepresented in tech for decades, and even more so for women of color. Between 2016 and 2021, the number of computing degrees conferred to Black, Latina, and Native American women in the U.S. nearly doubled, but their share of the workforce fell, according to a report from McKinsey. In 2018, they represented 4.6% of the U.S. tech workforce, but in 2022, that share had fallen to 4.1%.

HYPE has three main ways it tries to increase representation in tech. The first is the HYPE project, a 12-week after-school club that teaches middle and high school students how to code.

The nonprofit also offers a leadership academy, a 10-month after-school program for high school girls focused on college and career readiness. That program also connects students to paid internships.

Then there is the international experience, the program that first drew Thornton. Girls who have been through another HYPE program teach girls in another country or community what they have learned by leading a one-week coding camp.

The nonprofit works in Title I schools, which are schools with a high number of poor students. In Atlanta, those schools are primarily concentrated in the south side of the city and are overwhelmingly Black.

This year, HYPE also launched its own conference, the HYPE About Tech conference, a gathering of high school girls to expose them to artificial intelligence, influential women in tech and career readiness. The conference is backed by a three-year, $350,000 grant from the Sage Foundation, the social impact arm of global software firm Sage.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Since its founding, more than 4,000 girls in the U.S. and overseas have gone through HYPE’s programs, according to Newton. The nonprofit has worked with students in Newton, DeKalb and Clayton County school districts, as well as Atlanta Public Schools and the Georgia Cyber Academy.

A couple of years after the pandemic, HYPE brought back its international experience. In 2024 a few girls went to Jamaica — including Thornton, as an alum.

“It was nice,” she said. “I learned a lot.”

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