Tina Lee, the founder of MotherCoders, is one of the most impactful leaders in the tech industry, and her legacy can be found in tech events around the globe, company childcare, ERG groups and beyond. Board Member, Jennifer Tacheff interviewed Tina to look back on her journey and what's next for moms in the industry.

MotherCoders Founder Tina Lee on the Today Show in 2018

Why did you start MotherCoders?

I started MotherCoders in October 2012 because I couldn’t find meetups or workshops that worked for me schedule-wise when I wanted to develop my computer programming skills. For one, meetups and workshops in my area – while often free and run by wonderful volunteers – usually took place in the evenings during the week or all day during the weekend. At the time I was a mom of 2 young kids with a full-time job, this made it difficult for me to attend regularly, so I would go whenever the stars aligned, though not often enough for me to build the proficiency required to move into a technical role. And even when I did attend, sometimes with a baby in tow, I rarely felt a sense of belonging because I was usually the only mom.

There was this one Saturday meetup at a startup I attended, where I spent my 30-min lunch break nursing my daughter inside this office – the only one I found with a lock on the door and actual, non-glass walls. Being outside normal business hours, the heat was off, so I just sat on a mattress that was on the floor (I’m guessing this is where employees sleep if they pull all-nighters?), waiting for my baby to do her thing. While I sat topless trying not to freeze to death, I kept thinking, “What am I doing here?!! Everyone else is eating pizza and socializing, and I’m in this filthy room wondering about the sanitary condition of this mattress.”

Mind you, this was before tech workers, many of whom were Millennials, had become parents, so nursing rooms were not yet a thing and barriers preventing more women with kids from entering and staying in tech, such as lack of childcare and the motherhood penalty, had not entered the discourse around work/life balance. My presence was a novelty, at best. So after not getting anywhere with the occasional meetup and workshops, I tried the only thing left that I could access – self-directed, online classes, a modality that works only for about 5% of learners. Here I was, a professional with tech industry experience and an M.S. in ed-tech — someone who understands the tech landscape and knows what I want to learn and why, living in the tech-epicenter that is the SF Bay Area, with a supportive partner to boot — and yet I couldn’t make it work.

“What am I doing here?!! Everyone else is eating pizza and socializing, and I’m in this filthy room wondering about the sanitary condition of this mattress.”

Fueled by frustration but encouraged by a new crop of nonprofits that had sprung up focused on increasing diversity in tech by providing customized training programs for women, girls, veterans, and formerly incarcerated individuals, I set out to create one for moms to meet their specific needs. And since the industry seemed keen on building and diversifying the tech pipeline, and plenty of women with kids had college degrees (a must-have requirement even still) and relevant work experience wanted to work in tech, I figured not having a training program for moms was merely a glaring oversight, as most women eventually become moms, including those already working in tech, and the sooner we increase their ranks, the more hospitable the industry will become to workers with caregiving responsibilities overall.

What surprised you the most about this work?

Tina with her daughters, Ellie and Lexie, at MotherCoders Demo Day in 2016

People always surprise me. I feel immense gratitude to the people who showed up for me and the way they showed up. From friends who made donations and spread the word to corporate volunteers who gave their time and lent expertise, from women from the field who came to teach, inspire, and mentor our students to those that made important introductions to decisionmakers and donors, to those who told our story and ones who invited me to share a stage, to board members who held and encouraged me, and those who literally picked me up off the floor whenever things went sideways.

And of course I am so surprised by the resilience of our moms, many of whom have leveraged their experience at MotherCoders to carve out new paths for themselves as software engineers, UX designers and researchers, data scientists, digital marketers, and entrepreneurs.

What surprised me the most, however, was how one MotherCoders alum, Mikel Blake, literally took our entire model and curriculum and replicated MotherCoders in Utah. Mikel had launched her career as a software engineer through MotherCoders, and she’s now paying it forward by training hundreds of moms in the Salt Lake City area. Just think, all the children of the hundreds of moms we’ve touched now have a STEM role model right inside their own home, and that gives me so much hope for the future!

What are you most proud of? Any highlights?

One thing I’m most proud of is inserting moms into the movement to diversify tech. With 86% of women in the U.S. becoming moms, at least based on pre-Covid numbers, I felt our lack of visibility was a huge omission in the effort to promote greater inclusion, especially since workplaces were already (and still are) struggling with hiring and retention. Plus building workplaces with policies and cultures enabling moms to thrive would invariably benefit all workers, including dads and those with other kinds of caregiving responsibilities. And that’s to say nothing about our economic power – women drive 85% of business and consumer purchasing, with $2.1 trillion of spending attributable to moms alone.

When I first started MotherCoders and began telling people my mission to help moms achieve greater economic security by breaking into careers in tech, I would often get responses that were along the lines of, “Why would moms want to do that?,” which, as a matter of fact, is something a dude actually said to me verbatim. Back then the tech workforce generally comprised young millennials, though of course there were women with kids amongst their ranks who just weren’t that visible or worse – in the closet about it due to the stigma around caregiving that manifests as the motherhood penalty. And while that stigma still very much remains, affecting not only women with kids but also anyone with caregiving responsibilities, including fathers and those caring for elders or other loved ones, as well as childless women who might one day become caregivers, at least we are now having more productive and nuanced conversations about work/life balance. (That caregiver bias is real and it is pernicious!)

“In spite all this progress, however, I do find it alarming that companies are at once scaling back parental leave benefits, while mandating employees to return to office, even for jobs that do not require one to be physically present in the office to perform successfully. ”

The pandemic certainly accelerated that discourse by forcing us to confront social and economic factors that drive women out of the workforce, such as lack of childcare, broken career ladders, pay inequity, and burnout from trying to be the ‘ideal worker’ while meeting the impossible expectations for what it takes to be a “good mom.” But, thankfully, we’ve now got more prominent women leaders calling attention to the issue. Between countless books, think pieces, and research studies published by the likes of McKinsey and LeanIn.org, it seems companies are beginning to consider how they can tackle the unique set of challenges facing moms in the workforce, as well as caregivers writ-large, with solutions such as flexible schedules, remote and hybrid work, pay transparency, child care assistance, mentorship, and professional and leadership development and the like.

For the tech sector, specifically, major companies such as IBM, PayPal, Adobe, and Microsoft now have returnship programs for moms returning to the workforce or pivoting to tech. In addition, a spate of startups, many of them venture-backed, have formed to meet the needs of working mothers, including companies solely dedicated to helping moms land jobs, such as The Mom Project and Apres.

In spite all this progress, however, I do find it alarming that companies are at once scaling back parental leave benefits while mandating that employees return to office, even for jobs that do not require one to be physically present in the office to perform successfully. That’s why I’ve been cheering on women like Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls and Code, who has been extremely effective at highlighting the plight of moms since the pandemic through her new organization Moms First across the media landscape and government and policy circles — so much so she even got Lizzo’s attention! Go, Reshma, go!

Recent history has shown it takes about 20 years to get from public discourse to policy, and I’m extremely proud that MotherCoders got the party started in 2013. Which is to say: we only have about 10 years to go before we get a national policy for paid parental leave, universal pre-K, and childcare support for all federally-funded apprenticeship programs. (Right?)

The MotherCoders Journey: An Interview With Founder, Tina Lee

Why did you start MotherCoders?

What surprised you the most about this work?

What are you most proud of? Any highlights?