Black Girls Code founder Kimberly Bryant has officially been released from the organization she started after being indefinitely suspended eight months ago, according to TechCrunch.
According to the board, Bryant faced allegations of misgendering a company employee and “creating a toxic work environment” upon her termination as board member and chief executive. A day before, on Aug.11, Bryant filed a federal lawsuit citing a “conflict of interest” by Heather Hiles, a board member of Black Girls Code and stating that her suspension in 2021 was a wrongful removal as a result of Hiles’ desire to take over the nonprofit.
Back in December 2021, the founder learned that the board of directors she hired had indefinitely suspended her from her positions by being denied access to her emails. At the time, however, she was told that, while complaints against her were being reviewed, she was just put on administrative paid leave.
“Heather Hiles’ attempt to destroy BGC, which I built to help girls, especially girls of color, to enter into the high-tech industry of computer coding across the world, hurts me to my core,” said Bryant in a statement per Inc. “My painful feelings are for the girls who will suffer from Heather Hiles’ aggressive greed to dominate and destroy this beautiful community created to uplift and celebrate Black women and girls.”
In 2011, Bryant founded the nonprofit organization on her own as a pilot program. Inspired by her daughter’s growing interest in video gaming, the entrepreneur wanted to give young Black girls interested in computer science support after noticing a lack of BIPOC students in her daughter’s coding classes. Using money from her own 401k, Bryant started Black Girls Code in the basement of a college prep building.
With help from her own background as an electrical engineer, Bryant, one friend with a computer software engineering background and two friends who were in the biotech industry created their own six-week coding curriculum with guidance from an online open source MIT program curriculum.
Since then, Black Girls Code has grown from teaching classes in a basement to a dozen girls to teaching coding to hundreds of girls in over 15 chapters across the country.
Following her removal after over a decade at the head of Black Girls Code, Bryant received public support from other entrepreneurs.
“When no one believed in the abilities of young Black girls, Kimberly did,” said Nicole Tinson, the CEO of HBCU20x20, on Twitter. “The most important stakeholders that are impacted by this decision are the youth. This is really sad.”
