Girls Who Code challenged us to show a new generation of young women that career opportunities in STEM were possible. Yet a majority of them didn’t see themselves in tech, believing that being a girl was a disadvantage, not a superpower. 

Through more than fifteen stakeholder interviews and focus groups, we uncovered an opportunity to celebrate young women’s individuality and creativity as the true foundation of coding and problem-solving, leading to the strategic platform: Codify Life. We reframed coding as an act of experimentation and  self-expression, proving that code is not just math or science, but a tool that brings imagination into reality.

From the strategy came Girls Who Code Girls, a digital experience that challenged dominant STEM norms with a concept rooted in joy, resistance and futurism. Girls coded themselves into the gaming universe, creating over 624 billion unique character combinations that reflected real diversity across skin tones, body types and gender identities, including 46% of users coded smaller chest sizes, 49% included freckles, acne or vitiligo, and 62% coded Black and brown skin tones. By coding themselves into existence, these girls didn’t just learn to program, they reprogrammed representation, changing the future of gaming one line of code at a time.

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Awards: Glass Lion (shortlisted), Bronze Cannes for Creative Data