LEGiT Opportunity: The KC Tech Council’s LEGiT program offers experience to highschool girls interested in the tech industry

The Kansas City Tech Council, a local non-profit organization, is hosting a new program called Leadership and Empowerment for Girls in Tech over the summer. Applications are due April 15.

The program is for female-identifying, rising juniors and seniors and includes five half-day sessions throughout June and July. Each session will occur at a different tech company — Burns & McDonnell, Garmin, Dimensional Innovations, Oracle and VML — according to the Director of Workforce Initiatives, Christine Murray.

“[The program is] going to be opportunities to see what different careers in tech look like,” Murray said. “So things like tech project management or user experience design, or how hardware works with software companies, what these different career paths look like and what that opportunity for girls is to get on the track to explore those in the future.”

The goal of the LEGiT program is to provide an opportunity for girls to explore pathways in technology and bring more women into the tech workforce.

“If you look at the demographic information for the tech workforce, it skews primarily male and we just think part of that is that we need to provide more opportunities for girls to be aware of the different career paths,” Murray said. “There are lots of different opportunities in technology, and they aren’t all just coding.”

The program will have tours of the tech companies and listen to speakers — prominent women from each company — talk about their career paths and jobs in technology, according to Murray.

“It’s just really an opportunity to learn more about technology fields and get connected with their peer network group and also get connected with professional women who work in technology so that they can use [them] as a resource going forward,” Murray said.

Murray says the applications have minimal emphasis on grades and participation in prior tech programs through schools or other organizations. The main concern is the motivation of the applicant to learn more about technology. She expects around 20-30 students from various schools in the Kansas City area to be accepted.

Real World Learning Counselor James Dusek promoted the program through a mass school email on March 25.

“I would hate to think that girls would ever think that because they’re a girl a career opportunity is not open to them,” Dusek said. “I think this is one of those programs that make sure that doesn’t happen now or in the future.”