Rekode Blog A 13 Year Old's Mission to Empower Girls in Tech

Olina Helga Sverrisdottir (13) just delivered her first keynote speech on self image and girls in tech at the GeekiWood conference hosted at Florida International University on September 27, 2014. Olina has an interesting background compared to many other 13 year old girls as she has been coding since she was 9 years old. Given Olina's background, she was selected as an ideal fit for this event. Olina was reKode´s first student, a program that uses a unique methodology built on proven studies in Psychology, Education & Technology to teach kids from the age 6-14 how to create, collaborate and code. Olina and Annie HaywardSince Olina started, she began realising how helpful her coding skills could be in her daily life. Since she started coding she has gained more self confidence and Olina has better skills to evaluate information that she comes across on the internet. As we all know kids today are swamped with technology, and the reality is that they are consumers of it rather than creators and that is something Olina wants to change.FBI Award Winner at 11 Years OldUsing her coding skills, Olina created an explanatory game that explained how important it is to follow certain rules on the internet as in real life. By doing so, at the age of 11 she won a coding competition called Alice Challenge run by the FBI and Carnegie Mellon University. She was also the runner up for the Digital Girl of the Year in Europe last year.Tech OlinaOlina's passion is to empower girls to explore the diversity that tech has to offer. She has started her own blog called techolina.com where she shares her experiences and interviews experts in the tech field such as Megan Smith, CTO of the U.S. and Annie Hayward, Strategic Executive Consultant at SAP. To support her digital endeavours, she also created a Patreon site to raise money for her blog and future adventures. Currently Olina attends Redmond Jr. High School, and will be a fellow peer coach at reKode's Kode Girls class this November at Lake Washington Institute of Technology in Redmond.