With skill-building challenges and industry networking events, Roosevelt University supports young women who study computer science with a robust extracurricular support system. Girls Who Code and Women in Cybersecurity, led respectively by Evelyn Romero and Madeliene Gonzalez, help the University’s female tech students refine their skills outside the classroom and distinguish themselves from fellow candidates in a competitive entry-level environment.
Despite its outsized presence in modern life, the American tech sector still skews overwhelmingly male and white, with 77% of the workforce identifying as white and 79% identifying as male. Roosevelt’s tech clubs work to support young programmers and future tech leaders as they create a more equitable industry.
“Cybersecurity and computer science are industries that are definitely still male-dominated, so building these safe spaces for women and bringing us together beyond a classroom setting is really satisfying,” says Girls Who Code President Evelyn Romero. “What drew me to this group was the ability to learn sophisticated code and real-world problem-solving skills while I was still in school.”
Growing up in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, Romero was referred to as the “family password” at home and was intrigued by data from a young age. “Data is messy, and I love to organize it and break it down and analyze what you interpret from it, so I’ve been taking engineering and computer science classes since high school to prepare for this career.”
As president of Girls Who Code, Romero oversees training sessions for two primary cybersecurity student competitions hosted nationwide: the NICE Challenge and the NCO (National Cyber Olympiad). In both competitions, teams are presented challenges faced by tech professionals in workplace such as security breaches, virus infections and database information retrieval. In this virtual arena, victors are determined by speed and accuracy, and each event takes months of preparation and sometimes 72 hours to complete from the Roosevelt Girls Who Code “College Loop.”
“It’s such great real-world experience because it teaches you how to communicate with your team and solve a problem in real-time,” says Romero. “It looks amazing on a resume, and your future employer knows that you’ve worked on these complicated scenarios before you even step into an entry-level coding position.”
In this spirit of professional development, Girls Who Code and Women in Cybersecurity host many events that welcome guest speakers from the tech industry and encourage networking with Roosevelt’s female-identifying computer science and data science students. Events from the past semester included “Nice Girls Finish Last: Thriving in a Male-Dominated Cybersecurity Industry” and “Finding Your Spirit Animal,” which foregrounded female contributions to the field. The groups also welcomed guest speakers such as Netscape alumnus Jay DeWitt and Microsoft Senior Solutions Architect Bas Barnwell to discuss allyship and career readiness strategies. Combined with the real-world applications and training provided by Roosevelt’s tech program, these young women feel thoroughly prepared to enter the industry.
