Girl Geek Academy hunts for $2 million as it looks to relaunch with a focus on AI

It’s been a tough time for women in tech, both financially and emotionally, over the past 12 months.

It’s been a well-documented struggle to attract venture funding, despite the oft-stated best intentions of VCs. On top of that, governments have withdrawn support, with the NSW government killing off a $10 million fund to back female founders, and the federal government ending the Boosting Female Founders (BFF) grant program, with $17 million unspent, as well as getting rid of the the Women in STEM Ambassador program.

Meanwhile, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency report released earlier this year revealed tech’s problem with investing in women includes how much they’re paid.

Then there are the scandals such as WiseTech founder Richard White being accused of inappropriate behaviour with female entrepreneurs, tarnishing industry peak body the Tech Council of Australia, in the process, while several weeks earlier, James Curran founder of tech education program Grok Academy, departed after facing similar allegations of inappropriate communications with women and high school students.

The revelations have left Lisy Kane, cofounder of Girl Geek Academy, both upset and determined to do something about it.

And now she’s on the hunt for $2 million to do it.

It’s been four years since Girl Geek Academy ran its last program in 2020, before the pandemic hit. To that point the program had taught 12,000 kids and 1000 teachers how to code.

Now Kane wants to bring GGK back with an AI program, AI High, and drive safe and inclusive careers in the digital workforce.

“Recent events could not be sending a worse signal to young women with an ambition for a career in technology,” Kane said.

“Any smart educated woman would see the current outcome of the Richard White saga as a major deterrent for a career in tech, where the industry folds in on itself to defend his reputation.”

The added concern is that WiseTech, via White, also backed Grok Academy, which is now struggling, as well as the software company’s Earn and Learn program.

“This scandal has much larger consequences for Australia’s ambitions for its technology sector,” Kane said.

“WiseTech now has much larger issues to work through than supporting the next generation of technology workers. We need to galvanise on this issue and diversify support, or risk seeing Australia’s national agenda for its tech industry go backwards.”

Kane said she doesn’t want any programs closed in the wake of these issues

“We want more education programs for the technology sector, not less,” she said.

“But this saga underscores the importance of diversifying support across multiple programs, and purposefully funding that are aimed at supporting groups like women in the tech sector.

“We can’t bury our head in the sand and wait for this to blow over. We need to end this boys club mentality running technology education in Australia, and we can’t do it without broader support.”

Kane has launched a Change.org petition seeking greater support for tech education, especially for young women.