Dita Přikrylová (born 26 February 1989) is a Czech software engineer, a social entrepreneur, and the founder of , a non-profit organization based upon

Girls Who Code Girls Who Code (also known as GWC) is an international nonprofit organization that aims to support and increase the number of women in computer science. Among its programs are a summer immersion program, a specialized campus program, after-school ...

which provides technical education and networking possibilities for women and youth in

information technologies Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data and information processing, and storage. Information technolo ...

Education

Přikrylová studied

Systems Engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their Enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering uti ...

at the Faculty of Economics and Administration and Applied Computer Science at the , both at

Masaryk university Masaryk University (MU) (; ) is the second largest university in the Czech Republic, a member of the Compostela Group and the Utrecht Network. Founded in 1919 in Brno, it now consists of ten faculties and 35,115 students. It is named after To ...

Brno Brno ( , ; ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 403,000 inhabitants, making ...

. Přikrylová was selected as the only Czech participant in both the worldwide 2016 Young Transatlantic Innovation Leaders Initiative (YTILI) held by the

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy of the United State ...

and the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in Palo Alto, California.

Career

Přikrylová is most known for her work with Czechitas focusing on retraining women between the ages 20 and 45 in coding and information technologies. She founded Czechitas in 2014 with the goal of dismantling stereotypes and encouraging women and girls to learn coding to move into IT careers. The non-profit offers classes all over the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

and maintains community education centers in

and

Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...

. Via a partnership between Czechitas and Microsoft Corporation, Přikrylová helped create an Academy of Programming for children in the Czech Republic where youth aged 8 to 26 could obtain free online training, tutorials and resources for various computer programs. In 2016, with Christian Hirsig and Cornelia Meyer, she cofounded Powercoders, a non-profit in Switzerland with centers in

Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...

and

Zurich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

that teach refugees coding skills to improve their possibilities for employment. Apart from Czechitas, she is a business developer at the Prague branch of GreenFox Academy, a coding bootcamp began in Hungary, which offers free computer programming courses for women. Přikrylová serves on the Advisory Board of Social Impact Awards, a non-profit incubator for social entrepreneurship and innovation, where she represents over 500 program alumni ventures. She is also a board member of Cesko.digital, a non-profit online community for IT professionals in the Czech Republic who do pro-bono IT work for non-profits, government entities and

NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

's. As of September 2020, Přikrylová is the Director of Diversity, Inclusion and Communities for the Czech anti-virus software company

Avast Avast Software s.r.o. is a Czech multinational cybersecurity software company headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic, that researches and develops computer security software, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Avast had more th ...

Awards and honours

In 2016, Přikrylová was awarded the

European Citizen's Prize In 2008, the European Parliament introduced the European Citizen's Prize. It is intended to reward on an annual basis, individuals or groups who have particularly distinguished themselves in strengthening European integration by the expression of ...

by the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

for her efforts to increase women's and girls' technical and

digital literacy Digital literacy is an individual's ability to find, evaluate, and communicate information using typing or digital media platforms. Digital literacy combines technical and cognitive abilities; it consists of using information and communication tec ...

. The same year, she was selected as one of 30 youngest business leaders in the Czech Republic under the age of 30 by

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

magazine In 2017, she received the South by Southwest Community Service Award from

SXSW South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

in Austin, Texas. Also in 2017, Přikrylová was a member of the

Aspen Institute The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., but also has a campus in Aspen, Colorado, its original home. Its stated miss ...

Young Leaders Program in Central Europe. In 2018, she was selected as the Female Role Model of the year by Central European Startups Award,

Publications and presentations

* Přikrylová, Dita (2016)
''Business intelligence models for capturing and analysis of enterprise marketing data'' (Masters Thesis)
Masarykova univerzita, Fakulta informatiky. * Přikrylová, Dita (2017)
''Czechitas, or Why There Is a Lack of IT in Women Rather Than of Women in IT''.
April, 2017, Aspen Review. * Buhnova, Barbora and Přikrylová, Dita (2019). Women Want to Learn Tech: Lessons from the Czechitas Education Project. May 27, 2019, 2019 IEEE/ACM 2nd International Workshop on Gender Equality in Software Engineering (GE). * Přikrylová, Dita (2019)
''How to kick off your tech career - Dita Přikrylová (Czechitas)''
June 19, 2019, Code.Kiwi.Org. * Buhnova, Barbora, Jurystova, Lucie and Přikrylová, Dita (2019). Assisting women in career change towards software engineering: experience from Czechitas NGO. September, 2019, ECSA '19: Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Software Architecture.

References

External links

Czechitas
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prikrylova, Dita 1989 births Living people 21st-century Czech businesspeople Czech engineers Czech women computer scientists Masaryk University alumni Recipients of the European Citizen's Prize Czech women in business