Mariana Costa Checa

Mariana Costa Checa (born 20 March 1986) is a Peruvian businesswoman, the founder of the non-profit web development organization Laboratoria. She has received international recognition for her work in technological outreach to women with limited resources. In 2019, she was elected as the independent director of Engie Energy Peru.[1]

Mariana Costa Checa
Costa at her "Innovation and Empowerment" talk at APEC Peru 2016
Born (1986-03-20) 20 March 1986
Lima, Peru
Education
OccupationBusinesswoman
OrganizationLaboratoria

Early life and education

  Mariana Costa Checa was born in Lima on 20 March 1986. Growing up in Peru and studying abroad since college, Mariana always wanted to help her country achieve equal opportunity and bring more women and more diversity to the tech industry. After graduating from the London School of Economics and Columbia University, Costa returned to her native Peru. She started a web development company, but when she noticed how few women were working in the field when she noticed how few women were working in the field, she was inspired to create Laboratoria.

Laboratoria

Mariana is committed to addressing one of the toughest challenges facing the modern workforce: providing training and skills enhancement to elevate the playing field for underemployed women. Technology should be consumed equally by men and women, but if we only had men to develop the workforce, it wouldn't be able to meet the needs of women in the same way. That's why it's critical to get more women in the tech industry to provide better products that better serve women's needs. Second, as the economy and technology evolve, more and more jobs and positions are being replaced by automated machinery. These replaced jobs will be lower-skilled manual jobs, and women are overrepresented among these employees. So Mariana wants to reduce the negative social and economic impact that women will have in the fourth industrial revolution and give women the opportunity to work in the high-tech sector. Focusing on high-demand digital skills, such as web development and user experience design, it addresses the pain point of helping women who are already unemployed or in low-paying jobs to launch and develop promising careers in technology.

  Laboratoria's innovative approach to a series of courses, the six-month intensive codecAdemy, requires students to dedicate 8 hours a day from one week to the next. They learn everything from content management systems, JavaScript and jQuery to HTML5 and CSS3 until students can create websites and games independently in a few weeks. (Gonzalez, 2016) In addition, Laboratoria works with hundreds of companies to ensure that course materials are kept up to date. After six months of skills training, these women are qualified and competitive to enter the job market. The program trains these young women to become skilled coders and focuses on the psychology and self-esteem of being a woman.

  More than 2,400 women have graduated since 2019, with an employment rate of over 85%. Its graduates have worked for more than 950 companies worldwide, increasing their earnings by an average of 2.7 times and helping to close the talent and gender gap in tech. Mariana has been recognized several times for her work as a social entrepreneur. The BBC named her one of the most powerful women of 2016, and MIT named her one of Peru's leading innovators under 35. She also shared a panel with President Obama and Mark Zuckerberg at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit. (Anitab, 2020) She said that "With the digital economy transforming our region, we want to make sure women can benefit from its opportunities and be part of building our future as technology creators.

Recognition

In 2015, the Spanish edition of the MIT Technology Review named Costa to its list of Peru's innovators under 36.[2]

She was one of 11 Latin American women among the BBC's 100 Women of 2016.[3] During his presentation at that year's APEC Summit in Lima, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the case of Laboratoria as an excellent initiative geared towards women in the region:

The women who go to Mariana's program were able to access the opportunities that the Internet provides. That is the future I want to build.[4]

Barack Obama also had words of praise for Costa, stating that:

Now, when we were talking backstage, I had been reading about this, and I said, 60 percent of the women who have gone through this program now were employed. And I was corrected – it's now 70 percent. I had old data. But I think it's important to point out your success rate has been quite extraordinary already. So it's wonderful.[5]

In 2018, she received a Business Leaders of Change award, presented by El Comercio, EY, and ASBANC.[6]

For International Women's Day 2019, Mattel chose Costa as one of 20 women to have a Barbie doll based on them.[7]

References
  1. "Mariana Costa Checa es nueva directora independiente de Engie Energía Perú" [Mariana Costa Checa is New Independent Director of Engie Energía Peru]. Semana Económica (in Spanish). 21 March 2019. Archived from the original on 25 March 2019. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  2. Sánchez, María C. "Mariana Costa, 29". MIT Technology Review en español (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 15 March 2021. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  3. Collyns, Dan (1 December 2016). "How Latin American women are cracking the code to the tech sector". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  4. Taipe, Abraham (19 November 2016). "Mark Zuckerberg: Un emprendimiento peruano como ejemplo mundial" [Mark Zuckerberg: Peruvian Entrepreneurship as Global Example]. El Comercio (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 14 March 2017. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  5. "Remarks by the President at Global Entrepreneurship Summit and Conversation with Mark Zuckerberg and Entrepreneurs". Stanford University: Office of the White House Press Secretary. 25 June 2016. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  6. "Ocho empresarios peruanos fueron los ganadores del Premio Líderes Empresariales del Cambio" [Eight Peruvian Businesspeople are Winners of the Business Leaders of Change Award] (in Spanish). Lima: EY Peru. 19 April 2018. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
  7. "Barbie presenta muñeca inspirada en emprendedora peruana" [Barbie Presents Doll Based on Peruvian Entrepreneur]. El Comercio (in Spanish). Lima. 14 March 2019. Retrieved 25 August 2021.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.