Where you are born can still shape whether you ever imagine yourself working in technology.
Tech She Can began with a piece of research. In 2017, Sheridan Ash MBE commissioned “Time to Close the Gender Gap” while at PwC UK. It found that only 3% of female university and A-level students said a career in technology would be for them. Girls told us they were not getting enough information about technology careers at school, were not being encouraged towards them in the same way as boys, and often felt technology was too male-dominated for them to see themselves in it.
Sheridan founded the Tech She Can Charter in 2018 with 18 partner organisations, bringing industry and education together with one shared goal: to challenge stereotypes around technology careers and ensure young people could see technology as something they could be part of.
Rather than focusing only on teaching technical skills, Tech She Can focused on something earlier and often overlooked: changing perceptions. The organisation created free, teacher-led classroom resources that bring technology careers to life from primary school onwards, helping children understand the breadth of opportunities available and showing them that technology is not just about coding. It is about creativity, problem-solving and changing the world around us.
Tech She Can became a registered charity in 2021, building on this mission and expanding its reach across the UK. Today, we are a growing charity with a team of nine full-time employees working alongside more than 30 industry partners, including Chanel, NatWest, Lloyds Bank, PA Consulting, Google, Tesco, Unilever, Accenture, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and the Royal Air Force Charitable Trust.
Since launch, we have directly reached over 315,000 children in UK classrooms and generated more than 1.2 million global engagements through our free online resources.
Our work focuses on reaching young people who are most at risk of being excluded from future opportunities. Over half of the schools we work with in England have an above-average proportion of children eligible for free school meals, and over 90% are located in Education Investment Areas.
As technology continues to transform the world around us, our work has never been more important. The rise of artificial intelligence has created a new challenge: ensuring every young person, regardless of gender or background, understands that they can be part of shaping the technologies that will define their future.
In 2025/26, Tech She Can expanded its work to help young people explore emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, sustainability and digital innovation. Through initiatives including the Regenerative AI Roadshow delivered with Accenture and Microsoft, and our Girls in AI Summit, we have brought together industry experts, educators and students to make future technology careers feel visible, achievable and relevant.
Through the Regenerative AI Roadshow, our Tech We Can educators reached 16,000+ students across 48 schools and 9 UK regions, giving young people the opportunity to explore AI, think critically about responsible technology and use AI to solve real-world problems.
Our Career Insight Days remain one of the clearest examples of our impact. We open the doors of partner organisations to groups of students who often arrive with little confidence or understanding of what a career in technology could look like. By the end of the experience, over 85% say the day changed how they see people who work in technology.
One student told us:
“I didn’t think this was for me but maybe it is.”
This is the change Tech She Can exists to create: not just more young people choosing technology careers, but more young people believing those careers were possible for them in the first place.
