The Code of Arms, comprised of freshman Charlie Donnelly and sophomores Pragya Anur, Ellie Kunwar, and Sarah Kornfeld, learned valuable technical, business, and teamsmanship skills throughout this season, which will wrap up in late April.

Technovation is a free program that challenges girls to build an Android app that addresses a problem within their community. The program also educates its participants about entrepreneurship since teams create a pitch video and a business plan. “The teams in the Technovation program not only build a mobile app, but develop a business plan, branding, and revenue model for it,” Code of Arms team mentor and the first-ever Chief Data Officer of the Federal Reserve Micheline Casey said. “These skills are insanely valuable for young women to have, and hopefully, many of these young women will go on to start their own companies.” Casey became a mentor after she heard about the Technovation program through a friend.

The best six teams will be invited to the World Pitch event in San Francisco, where they will have a chance to win $10,000 in seed funding to further develop their app. Previously, notable tech figures, such as the founder of VMWare Diane Greene and CEO of Edmodo Crystal Hutter have previously volunteered for Technovation.

As a new program at Menlo, M-BEST director and Code of Arms mentor Nina Arnberg, who piloted the program, decided to limit participation to one team of four participants. “I wanted to work with a small group because I wasn’t familiar with the program and neither was anyone who would be participating,” Arnberg said. Arnberg made this year’s team after asking participants of the computer science M-BEST workshop if any were interested.

The Code of Arms’ app focuses on the disconnection between the elderly and their community and aims to close that gap. “Because the elderly don’t use tech[nology] as much as our generation does, we want to connect them through a social media app for them,” Anur said.

The team had the help of both Arnberg and Casey. As mentors, Arnberg and Casey made sure the team was keeping up with the curriculum and supported them with any challenges that arose. “As role models, [we’re also] available to talk about our careers in STEM and business professions,” Casey said.

Throughout the season, the girls learned a variety of key skills from both the business and technology realm. “We all really wanted to build an app but didn’t have a good idea for one, so it was really cool to see how so many problems that could be solved with technology,” Kornfeld said. Working alongside app developers, venture capitalists, and data scientists also taught the team how the skills they learned can be implemented in the real world.

The Technovation program provided an educational and enjoyable experience. “We’re really enthusiastic about our problem,” Donnelly said. “The market research we did showed that other people cared about [our problem] as well, so the best part is actually meeting and working on [the app,]” Donnelly said.

As the girls wrap up their season, Arnberg hopes to continue the program for the years to come. “We definitely will expand next year but conservatively because it’s only the second year of the program and there’s a lot we want to learn about how to implement the curriculum before we expand big,” Arnberg said.

Article by Lauren Yang ’17, originally published in the Code of Arms. Reprinted with permission.