In the Guardian, Managing Director of DevelopHer,  Emily Atkinson shares her story on how she made the switch from English and philosophy to tech.

Having a successful career in Stem doesn’t mean spending your teen years coding in a dark room, as software engineer Emily Atkinson proves. She studied English and philosophy for her BA Hons at the University of Birmingham, which provided the inspiration for her next move – an MSc in computer science. “I’d found the logic modules in philosophy incredibly enjoyable, and had heard programming was rooted in similar problem solving,” she says.

But Atkinson also has what she calls her “side career”. Four years ago, she co-launched and ran a community for women in tech now known as DevelopHer. Initially, they ran events on tech topics.

“But we asked the community what they wanted, and we expanded into doing technical and soft skills workshops. For example, we ran a coding weekend for 100 women with two other organisations.”

‘There are so many ways into tech’: how I switched from literature to programming
Here’s how she did it.