At Makers, we are on a mission to close the gender gap in tech. We know that we need more women training in digital skills and joining the tech industry, whether it’s through joining an employer or launching their own venture.
For Women’s History Month, the annual declared month that highlights the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society, we wanted to celebrate three women who have completed training at Makers then gone on to build incredible careers in three different parts of the ever-changing tech industry.
Ruth Earle
Squad Lead at AND Digital
Designing an app in her spare time inspired Ruth to look into a career in coding, and she trained at Makers in 2014. Coding wasn’t something she had initially considered as a career option. As a full-time, stay-at-home mother with two kids under eight years old at the time, she had previously worked in customer-facing fields but then left to focus on being a Mum.
“When I became a single parent, though, I wanted to be a good example to my children and get back into a career,” she says. “Joining Makers was one of the best decisions I have made in my life.”
However, she shares her experience of ‘two official meltdowns’. “Fortunately, the staff were superb and reassured me that I was exactly where I needed to be and that most people go through the same feelings,” she says.
“The coaches gave the right amount of instruction and hand-holding while giving us the space to figure things out on our own. Being a developer is about problem-solving and constant learning. You’re always re-evaluating what you think you know, so dealing with that is important.”
After Makers, she became a full-stack web developer at the financial news business, Mergermarket. She then became a Product Developer at AND Digital, where she worked on the NodeJs layer, improving code quality and error handlingMedToken: Greenfield blockchain project, as well as building out a new editorial tool for fashion shows for Condé Nast International.
She was then a full-stack engineer for SalesTrip, an expense management and travel booking system on Salesforce. She then returned to AND Digital to take her first official leadership role within AND’s fourth London Club. Over the years, she has followed her passion for crafting beautiful code and an understanding that great software can be built through great tests.
Phoebe Hugh
Founder & CEO of Brolly (the world’s friendliest insurance company)
Phoebe taught herself to code and, before Makers, was working in the insurance industry for Aviva. Her role started as underwriting commercial property and liability insurance; then, she moved into product management across niche, high net worth, price comparison and direct insurance.
She kept coming across stories from dissatisfied insurance customers and couldn’t help but notice the glacial pace of change in corporate environments. So she set out to make insurance more accessible and fairer. She quit her job, joined Makers, then went onto Entrepreneur First, after which she launched Brolly. Brolly was acquired by Direct Line Group in 2016.
Learning to code taught Phoebe to “communicate well with developers so that we would be able to work together in the most productive and collaborative way.” She thought it was important to know the principles and challenges of building software and identify what is possible and what is not when creating a product.
Most importantly, it helped her learn how to identify a good programmer. While she hasn’t been coding day-to-day for a while, she says that Makers credits her with learning full-stack development, specifically Javascript, Ruby, HTML/CSS, test-driven development; she also became proficient with Git.
“I never expected to build the product myself, as it’s not where I add the most value, and I’ll never be at the same standard as someone who has been coding for decades, but it was successful in expanding my knowledge of creation… and I actually just really loved programming!”
Kate Morris
Digital Accessibility SME & Outcome Manager at Deloitte Digital
Kate had spent 18 years in the domestic construction industry but then realised that she wanted to return to tech. She had been working in tech two decades ago, but when she tried reaching out to tech recruiters, they would not even return her calls.
She came to a Makers open evening, where she connected with some of the staff and found the presentation “compelling, informative and fun.” However, she knew that she would have to find the course fees, go without an income while she did the course, and then have to find a job afterwards. She is also a single mother of four.
Makers helped her overcome any doubts she had, and through the challenging nature of the course, she was forced to complete complex tasks with nebulous goals, which she said changed her method for learning and increased her confidence.
“I had become brave. I had learned how to teach myself. Equipped with new concepts, optimism, and curiosity, I no longer wanted to simply build something that sang: I wanted it to dance too.”
After she finished the course, she didn’t just want any job — she had preferences and options and completed multiple technical tests and phone interviews with various companies.
Within five days, she was talking to seven companies, and within three weeks, she had two compelling job offers. She started with Deloitte Digital and is still there several years later, now working as Digital Accessibility SME & Outcome Manager.
Interested in training at Makers? If you are a women or a gender minority, you will receive a 10% discount at our coding bootcamp. Find out more here.
