PS Solutions celebrates the first decade of the PS Solutions Foundation serving many students as young as elementary school to high school and early college!
Launching in 2012, the PS Solutions Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit organization to encourages young girls to develop an interest in software engineering. By partnering with educational providers, we help them provide opportunities for young girls to explore Computer Science early, with the hope that they’ll be able to envision themselves in such careers later down the line.
What a decade it has been! Some of our favorite initiatives have been partnering with schools and businesses along the east coast to share #girlsintech! We had employees from all three of our development centers (Altoona, Pittsburgh, and Wilmington) host Lunch-N-Learns at Isaac Bear Early College, Sea-Tech High School, and Bishop Guilfoyle, catering to 75+ students in one month alone! Our recent Women in Tech Series highlighted 12 intelligent women in various roles in different companies across the country. Women joined us from Google, Microsoft, GNC, Allegheny Health Network, Apiture, Health Possible, and more! With efforts to share these interviews with schools, our hope is for young students to be encouraged and see themselves in a similar role one day.
We have also partnered with community partners such as Cucalorus to host an Elementary Discovery Camp and donated scholarships for kids to attend summer coding camps at PSU! With the help of students from Sanderson Highschool in Raleigh, NC participating in District C, an organization that helps students learn the skills to come up with business solutions, we were able to develop a plan catered by students for students to further grow our foundation.
As we reflect, when first starting the PS Solution Foundation, we knew we had to be at the forefront of the inequality in the technology industry. Providing free resources and spreading awareness and opportunities has always been our goal. We have seen tremendous growth in the #WomeninTech movement over the last decade, but there is still work to do. Thank you to our communities, partners, and friends for helping us through support, time, and finances. A special thank you to the Sheetz family for your initial donation 10 years ago. We are proud of what we have accomplished thus far but we are just getting started. Here is to our first 10 years and the next 10 to come.
“It’s been exciting to see the achievements of the PS Solutions Foundation. Getting more women involved in software engineering in the US vastly improves our country’s resources and talent pool. Our foundation ties so closely to our company belief that software technology should be developed in the United States.” – Wayne Hippo, Managing Partner
For more information on the PS Solutions Foundation, please visit www.pssolutions.net/foundation. If interested in coordinating a Lunch-N-Learn for your students, reach out to Wayne Hippo at whippo@pssolutions.net. To donate to support young women in technology, please visit www.pssolutions.net.
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