Father Writes Letter Of Gratitude To CEO Of Disney

This year, the Girls Who Code summer immersion program was hosted by Disney at Burbank Studios in Burbank, California. Girls Who Code (GWC) is a nonprofit organization which aims to support and increases the number of women in the field of technology and in computer science. GWC offers a lot of networking opportunities to women and is working really hard to close the gender gap in technology.

Christopher Go, father of a girl who attended this year’s Summer Immersion Program, expressed his gratitude in a letter to the CEO of Disney, Robert Iger.

In his letter, he thanks the whole team. He shares that the support the whole team has shown was incredible. He writes that it was a great opportunity for his daughter Olivia and all the other girls who attended the Immersion program and the support Disney has shown all the girls was incredible.

He writes, “The support you have shown this program was incredible. You thought enough of the Girls Who Code mission to assign a full-time Disney Staff to the girls, and the work that Ben Wise and his team did on behalf of the girls was jaw-dropping.”

He shares that the girls got to see the technology behind the scenes at Disneyland. They were then also given a chance to spend the rest of the day there. He then talked about the presence of the CIO and other prominent people at the program. He said, “But of all the amazing things that Mr. Wise arranged for the girls, there were two things that really stood out. First was the opportunity to have people, like your CIO, Susan O’Day and other women in influential tech positions, at Disney speak to the girls. Web Design, Artificial Intelligence, Imagineering, Virtual Reality — all fields at Disney where women are in prominent positions.”

“For the first time in her life, we saw her connect and identify with females who like her felt inadequate in the STEM fields when they were younger. As parents, it was incredible to witness this awakening.”

Quality of program

The other thing that Christopher Go appreciates about the program was the quality of the Girls Who Code program. He writes, “From her teacher, Dina, to the Peer Mentors, Camila and Franchesca, the quality of education that happened in that room was astounding. My daughter who could barely use Microsoft Word was actually designing and programming websites, coding in Python and C+ and designed this cool mobile app that helped people find exercise partners in their area and tie exercise to mental health. I would never in a million years guessed that my daughter would be remotely interested in these things. She thrived.”

Rainbow of colours

He shares that his daughter has made some strong connections with the other girls there and has started talking about “sisterhood”. He feels that it is commendable that in LGBT and people of other colour that are being marginalized, GWC is helping empower women and transforming those young minds into the empowered aggregate of the minds.

"When we went to graduation day, we were surprised to find out that the girls she had raved about were from different parts of the city and all different races. It was a rainbow of color and it was beautiful."

He ended up by thanking Reshma Saujani, Founder of GWC, for bringing Girls Who Code to Disney and graciously accepting his daughter’s application for the program. He also thanked Ben Wise who is serving as Manager of Recruitment and Research at the Walt Disney Studios for putting his heart and soul into the program and making it special for the girls.

 “You have transformed my child. I will never be able to thank you and Disney enough.”

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Deepali Is An Intern With SheThePeople.TV