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My Big Idea by Kathryn Parsons
Winner of Veuve Clicquot’s New Generation Business Women Award, Kathryn Parsons, on her Big Idea
The winner of Veuve Clicquot’s New Generation Business Woman award is Kathryn Parsons, the 31 year old founder of tech education company Decoded. Here she explains the big idea that drove her to start her company
After graduating from Cambridge University in Classics, I began working in publishing and advertising before I decided to set up my own business The Scarlett Mark. In 2011 I co-founded tech education company Decoded which teaches people how to code in a day, and have since become an advocate for women in technology.
Everything started with the realisation that there was this new language – digital code – affecting everyone’s lives professionally, but no-one understood it. Think of waking up in China one day – how can you even walk around the street and find your way unless you had a basic understanding at least of the language? How can you be effective, how can you capitalise upon opportunities? I felt particularly frustrated because I’m a linguist by background and I felt that I should be able to get my head around any language.
After talking to Steve Henry [another co-founder of Decoded] I knew that it wasn’t just me who didn’t understand, it was everyone. And code was a language relevant to everyone, whether a trader at Goldman Sachs, a housewife getting back into the workplace, someone in traditional industry looking to get into technology or someone in technology who’s not a ‘techie’. So much of our lives is lived through the lens of code. There’s just an increasing divide between the people who get it and the people who don’t. The people who get it are the ones making all the money, innovating, changing. These skills are affecting the economy. The economies that get it are the ones that are surviving. It’s a big issue.
And so we teach someone how to code in a single day. We give an incredible amount of skill, knowledge, confidence, in one day. The idea sounds mad, but the reason we did it is because nobody has any time. It’s about incredible accelerated learning. Equipping yourself with a new language is not just about the skillset and fluency; it’s about understanding a culture. Fear is a big issue at first but after a class, many talk about seeing the world differently; they look at digital things and unpick and understand them, which can be an incredibly liberating feeling. Words like ‘magic’ and ‘transformation’ are often used after sessions as attendees realise how the skills are going to change their lives and make them better at what they do. Having a real context of the language of HTML, javascript, API, gives you basic literacy. Then you can do anything from create data visualisation to making your own apps. We’re a catalyst for change in our students’ lives; that might be going on to set up a new company, drive their business in a new direction, or set up a pro-social initiative around teaching code in the schools in their area.
The objective of the business was education, but the lack of women in tech was quickly evident. We’ve actually always had 50:50 male to female ratio coming to the coding sessions though the exception is generally when boards of companies attend – the makeup of which is predominantly men, which is another issue. Women are curious, they have an appetite to learn but have less belief that it’s for them. There’s a nefarious myth that coding is for guys, that women’s minds won’t ‘get it’ as much. Imagine telling women 100 years ago ‘you’re too stupid for the vote’ – we wouldn’t even imagine that being possible now.
Digital literacy is within the reach of absolutely everyone. It’s not a ‘nice to have’ skill, it’s essential. There are a lot of clichés about the kind of person with programming skills but ultimately, coding is about logical thinking and problem solving. Women are amazing problem solvers and good collaborators so it is bizarre that women are not opting in to technology careers. Increasingly, I’ve become aggressively ambassadorial for the fact that businesses should be paying to skill up their young, talented female workforce.
I knew about the Veuve Clicquot awards for many years. I remember my friend’s mother Susan Vinnicombe was involved with the awards and took me along to one of them – it was such an exposure. She was a professor at Cranfield [of organisational behaviour and diversity management] and a real ambassador for women in business. From a young age it inspired me to go into business. Now, as the recipient of the inaugural New Generation Award I have a platform where I can tell my story; I can inspire women to explore the opportunities of becoming entrepreneurs themselves, and see the opportunities that code skills can give them while debunking a few clichés as well. When I worked in my first ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, business was so often just done with the boys, but I’ve found that working in technology for the last two years, our business has grown in a big way through my relationships with other businesswomen. The women I’ve worked with, such as Mel Exon (Managing Partner at global innovation unit of advertising agency BBH) or Jemima Kiss (media reporter at the Guardian), have no other agenda apart from achieving great things through work. If I had to choose my top favourite people I’m working with in the last few years, the majority are other successful businesswomen. With Veuve Clicquot it’s great to be suddenly part of this incredible group of women that I look up to, who have so much that I can learn from.
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