Tag Archives: MIT

A Year in Review Part 2: Diversity, Access, and Social Impact

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General Assembly Social Good Black Girls Code Workplace Diversity

This year we partnered with Black Girls Code to increase access to STEM education. Photo courtesy of Black Girls Code.

With a mission to close the global skills gap and help people pursue work they love, General Assembly strives to create opportunities that impact a vast range of communities.

This year, we were proud to voice our support for access to education and inclusive hiring in the media. We spoke out about promoting computer science education through the Computer Science for All Initiative, and released a white paper on skills-based hiring. We partnered with many innovative organizations to make a difference in the tech sector, launching new campaigns and programs to promote equality in startup funding, champion computer science education for kids, help New Yorkers get well-paying data jobs, and much more.

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General Assembly Honored at MIT Inclusive Innovation Competition

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General Assembly at MIT's innovation conference

Tom Ogletree, Director of Social Impact at General Assembly, presents our Opportunity Fund program at MIT’s Inclusive Innovation Conference. Photo: Dominick Reuter

General Assembly has an ambitious vision for the future. We’re working toward a world in which we can close the global skills gap, ensuring that everyone — regardless of social or economic barriers — has access to the training they need to pursue a career they love. To achieve this goal, we work closely with employers to understand the workforce they need, and then empower students and employees with these skills.

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Alumni Interview: Abby Howell

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Meet Abby Howell. Abby first became interested in computer programming while working with Deaf children and using Scratch, a visual programming language for kids developed at MIT. Here’s her story.

What were you doing before you came to GA?

I was a teacher of Deaf children with special needs. I taught for five years at the middle school level and one year of elementary school. I was teaching my students to use Scratch to make little games and was struck by the creative potential and started using Scratch for my own projects. I used Scratch to build teacher tools, interactive science simulations, self-grading quizzes, vocabulary practice games, all kinds of things. I started using Scratch to solve Project Euler problems on the weekends. I bought books about programming and started teaching myself JavaScript. I wanted to learn a real programming language but I didn’t know where to start. I knew a lot of software developers but they had all taught themselves programming when they were kids, and none of them seemed to know how to teach programming or how I could go about learning it.

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