Being a female Christian in tech places you in the double minority.
Imagine an app whose users pray through their contact lists with the goal of collectively praying for the whole world. Christian developers like Lori Hill teamed up to create Ceaseless, which invites people to “pray for three friends each day and together we can pray for everyone on earth.”
Hill plugged away at the program during Code for the Kingdom’s global hackathon in October. The event brings together Christian coders, designers, and entrepreneurs for an intensive weekend of collaboration.
Over the past couple years, Hill’s work on Ceaseless allowed her to prove her tech chops after two decades as a stay-at-home mom and to get the experience to land a job as an iOS developer. Working for NBC, where she makes apps for the Today Show, NBC News, and NBC Nightly News, Hill said the biggest barrier for working moms is getting employers to trust their skills.
“You could say that the barrier is that the technology changes, but really, I learned the new technology,” the Seattle-based developer said. “The barrier was that companies just don’t have the mindset that there is this pool of people that would be fantastic employees, that they don’t even think of it. It’s not even on their radar.”
It’s no secret that women are a minority in the tech industry; Christian women in tech make up an even narrower demographic. According to the National Center for Information and Technology, women make up just 25 percent of the tech workforce. By 2020, just three percent of the 1.4 million computing jobs will be occupied by women.
The industry doesn’t only need more women, it needs more women like Hill. Hackathons like the ones put on by Code for the Kingdom reveal how ...
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