Have you ever wondered why programming is seen as a man’s game? Where are all the women software developers hiding? Marianna Budnikova is a software engineer at Microsoft. Back when she was in college, she set upon a quest to find out why there are so few women in tech. In this talk, Marianna shares her discovery about what takes young girls and women away from technology and gives some suggestions for tackling the problem.

Marianna Budnikova is a professional hacker (aka software developer) at Microsoft. With bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science, Marianna fell in love with programming as she started building mobile apps, mocking with video game making, rendering 3D graphics, and using artificial intelligence to solve the world’s largest problems. Originally from Russia (“the greatest hacker community”), Marianna was amazed at how few U.S. women pursue technology as a career. So she began a quest to solve this problem by founding the Association for Computing Machinery Women’s Club at Boise State University. She also contributed weekly entries to a blog called CodeBrave and co-founded (and is currently a chapter leader of) Girl Develop It Boise, a local chapter of a national nonprofit that provides affordable technology education to women.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx