High School Internships in Tech Change Lives

Code2College is changing lives by preparing and placing high school students, who are predominantly Black and Latina girls, into life-changing paid, Summer internships. Code2College high school internships lead to outsized college access, generational wealth-building opportunities and a stronger, more inclusive STEM workforce and ecosystem.

Marlene represents a stellar example of the impact that the Code2College experience can have. Marlene joined our program as a high school sophomore without ever having written a line of code. In fact, Marlene was largely uncertain of her path, whether law or computer science. But Marlene joined Code2College during in our first program year of programming and attended classes twice weekly learning directly from software engineers from the likes of Atlassian and Silicon Labs. These industry professionals served as volunteer instructors and helped Marlene to develop impressive technical skills, create her first technical project portfolio and ultimately secure Asha Rangappa - CNN commentator, former FBI agent and former Dean of Admissions at Yale Law School - as a website development client. You can find the final product that Marlene developed here: https://asharangappa.com/.

In addition, Marlene participated in monthly corporate office visits to companies like Google, Facebook and Silicon Labs. Code2College hosts these office visits to help students explore both professional skills development and STEM industry exploration. At Facebook, Marlene crafted and developed her first professional resume during the Code2College Black History Month workshop, and later that Spring participated in her first-ever series of mock interviews with Googlers at the Google Austin office.

Imagine being 15 years old, regularly meeting professionals from across the Tech ecosystem and developing the materials necessary to apply for a technical role.

Further, Marlene explored a variety of STEM industries through Code2College STEM case competitions like the one held in the Spring with Silicon Labs. During this event, Marlene learned semiconductors and delved into a half-day long case that challenged her to work through the manufacturing, development and marketing processes of more powerful, low-cost semiconductor chips.

And after a full program year of STEM case competitions, professional skills workshops and learning directly from engineers, Marlene realized that she was interested in pursuing a career in software engineering.

She secured her first technical internship as a Software Development Intern with Q2, a long time Code2College intern employer and partner, after her freshman year. Though she received a return offer, she moved to a Software Engineering internship with Microsoft two Summers in a row and recently accepted her full-time offer to start as a Software Engineer with Microsoft in June 2023 after she graduates from Georgetown University with a degree in Computer Science.

Now imagine being a 15-year-old Latina from a single-parent household. Your Mom works two jobs to ensure that you and your little brother have all that you need. The most senior professionals that you’ve met are your teachers and what you know of college is what little they’ve shared about their own experiences, because you’re first-generation twice over: both in attending college and American-born.

Marlene is the embodiment of what’s possible through the Code2College program. We’re deeply invested in our students and alumni - through coding education, STEM industry and career exposure and unprecedented technical work experience - and excited for outcomes like Marlene’s.

And our work is not only transformational. It’s generational.

Marlene shared with us that she is moving her mother and brother to Redmond, WA to live with her so that her mother can retire and get to enjoy raising her brother without the challenges of working two jobs. So now Marlene, her brother and her mother have now been positively impacted by Code2College.