 Live from San Francisco, it's The Q. Here's your host, Jeff Frick. Hi, Jeff Frick here with The Q. We're on the ground at Pure 48 in San Francisco, California at the top coder. Open. Open. 14. The 14th event. And we're here because really it's about the girls in STEM in high school. I'm really happy to be joined by the managing director, the brain child, the girl that put it together. Awesome. Mary Naruse, whose real job is VP of outreach to your coders who are here coding, but really took it upon yourself to introduce this new program. So talk a little bit about how you got the idea, how it came about, how you're able to execute it. Absolutely. I am a mom of two daughters. I have a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old. And in addition to that, I'm a woman in technology. I have been in the field for the past 20 years. I have been a programmer. I've done it all. You name it, I've done it. And when I had this opportunity to go ahead and really speak about what it takes, why do we need girls in STEM, much like that passion about what I want to tell my girls to do and be, I am the role model for them. I was looking for a way to go ahead and bring their own models in and bring these high school girls who may not have their own models to feel as passionate and see that technology is an option for them. And it's a lucrative business. We need them and they need this kind of a career path to be able to be successful. So all of that combined together is really what I saw. This was a perfect venue for me to go ahead and have our first inaugural girls in STEM program. Right. So a little bit about the numbers. How many high schools do you have? How many girls? I noticed you have like a Girl Scout troop. You have a really good variety. Yes. As a matter of fact, we have 11 high schools and a Girl Scout troop that has been part of this. 200 girls. And we actually had a waiting list. So we had to ask folks to accept no more people coming in primarily because we didn't know whether we had enough staff to support the girls. But there was a lot of interest. We've had folks driving from far away distances. So we're really excited to see this level of enthusiasm on the venue today. Yeah. And you've got Palo Alto High School. So that's good. I have $2 to Palo Alto. So that's good. The girls from Lincoln seem to be the most vocal. I think we have more questions from the girls from Lincoln. Amazing questions. We're amazed by the questions that these girls are asking. To me, it's incredible to see that you normally think high school girls. Oh, they're still figuring it out. They've already figured out. I could have closed my eyes and imagined having professional women sitting in and asking the same kind of questions. Yeah. Well, as I comment on the last week, to me, the best part of the questions was the comfort and kind of the funniness of the question. Like, what do you wear to work question to me really shows that they're comfortable and they're curious. So that's a real question. That's not a complete BS question that somebody told them to ask. Yeah. One of the things that we really wanted to do with this panel was I was looking for women who are relatable. We have a lot of famous, very successful women in technology and they are great. But I was looking for more relatable females who could strike that balance with the audience so that the audience sitting in there could imagine, oh, she's really cool. She's funny, but yet smart. I want to be her. Right, right. And as we were talking all fair from Grace Hopper's celebration of computing, Maria Clave was very adamant in that the fact that men, boys, Mark Zuckerberg is not a great role model for girls. He's not a great guy and he hasn't built a great company, but girls are looking for women. And so to get this nice variety and their titles weren't too high, I'm sure, you know, you know, Sandberg's great lady, maybe a little intimidating, you know, but just kind of girls in middle and higher tier positions, I think great call. Exactly. That's exactly the case. I think there's only very few women who get to be like a show Sandberg and that's amazing. I mean, one more of them. But at the same time, you can be a software engineer and be highly successful and passionate in what we do. I mean, we want to make it as, in a way, we want to let the students feel that it could be them. They don't have to be a Cheryl Sandberg to be successful. You could be a software engineer, just like Jefferina. Right, right. And equally feel that passion. And this is just the beginning of what you can, in fact, achieve. Right. And I think the other one that came up at the end was the car question, right? Yes. The fact that that gal had never really equated cars with technology when, in fact, you know, we do a lot of tech shows. Cars are basically rolling tech platforms with more software than there is anything else in a car. So the opportunity to tell them that, yes, you can get involved in cars. In fact, one of the panelists, I think, said she interned at GM, so a terrific opportunity. So where do you take it from here? Great inaugural thing, over-subscribed, huge demand. And, you know, quite frankly, there's a huge demand for these jobs. There aren't enough engineers to fill the jobs. So it seems like a no-brainer to get the girls going this way. Absolutely. Much like our CIO, Glenn Weinstein, spoke, I am responsible for a lot of the hirings at Iperio. And to me, this is just the beginning of what we at Iperio will continue to do. Not only we need more women in our own workforce, I think this is an area that we can certainly give back to the community. Iperio does a lot of community work. Girls in STEM is one of those initiatives that we've taken on. Given the response that we've had and given the passion that's there across, you see a lot of Iperians here, I feel that the next event, the next top quarter open, expect to see more people, more tracks, and I hope we can even do more than one event throughout the year. That's awesome. So if people want to get involved, they want to contribute, they want to help, what should they do? Well, join the local organizations that are out there. There are many of them. As a matter of fact, I belong to a women in technology group in a DC area. I mentor girls in technology groups. There's code.org, girls can code, black girl code. It's amazing. Just all you need to do is just go ahead and Google girls and coding. And all these groups are locally situated. They have hackathons, they have meetups. Put your name out there. Go meet some of the people who are just like you. And you will find that everyone that you meet are as cool and interesting, as passionate as you are, and hopefully that will lead to a technology career. Well, Marion, thank you very much for having us. Congratulations on your first event. Huge success. Really supporting girls who code, high school girls in STEM, trying to keep them on track, showing there's a lot of great opportunities for a career path going forward. So I'm Jeff Frick. We're on the ground. Pier 48 at the top Coder Open 2014. You're watching theCUBE.