Former Victoria’s Secret Angel, the face of Swarovski, brand ambassador for Express, 6.5 million followers on Instagram: Karlie Kloss is one of the most successful American models of our time. The “six foot two giraffe from the Lou” has graced many a runway, but her catwalk isn’t what she wants young girls to follow her footsteps in; the supermodel wants more girls to become interested in the world of coding.
Kloss got into coding through her intrigue with how popular apps like Instagram work. Being interested in science and math before being discovered, she took a class about the basics of creating digital apps and coding at the Flatiron School in New York City. Kloss learned to code in Ruby on Rails and programmed a small drone to deliver cookies across the classroom.
Kloss considers herself an amateur and is mainly focusing on her booming career in the fashion industry, but she states that coding is similar to fashion in that they’re both about creativity. She also credits her knowledge of code to helping her become a better business woman. She wants more girls to be exposed to this new frontier - and an expanding frontier it is. The U.S Department of Labor predicts that careers in STEM will make up 1.3 million job openings by 2022, and programmers and software developers will make up 4 of every 10 new jobs in the computer and math fields. Unfortunately, women in this area are extremely underrepresented; Only 18% of all computer science degrees are earned by women. Kloss wants that to change as she finds “Women are essential in forging digital progress.” She wants to transform code from “just a boy thing” to a creative opportunity for women to shape the world around them.
