Several years ago, earlier in her career, Ruth Polachek was head of the Citibank startup accelerator, immersing into finance and innovation, after working at global investment banks. That’s when she started to realise that there aren’t that many female software engineers.

“It really began as a way for myself and other women to meet other female software engineers,” Polachek told The Times of Israel. “It started as a side project and the community grew and grew and became so big that I had to stop everything else and focus on it.”

That is how she codes came to life, a female developer community founded by Polachek in 2013. Building up the community, it turned into a non-profit organisation with a goal for women to make up 50% of software developers in the Israeli high-tech scene. She codes now has over 50,000 female members and is focused on helping women with or without any formal technological education or relevant professional background to break into the high-tech software development job market.

Click here to read the full story in The Times of Israel.