Come see the future of girls in high-tech entrepreneurship!  At the NYC Technovation Challenge Pitch Night, 10 teams of high school girls pitch the mobile apps THEY have designed and prototyped to a panel of industry expert judges and venture capitalists.  The winning team gets flown to National Pitch Night in Silicon Valley for a chance to have their app developed professionally and distributed on the Android Marketplace.

Technovation Challenge NYC Pitch Night

Keynote Speakers: Hilary Mason (Bit.ly), Heidi Dangelmaier (Girlapproved)

Judges: Charlie O'Donnell (First Round Capital), Deborah Jackson (Golden Seeds), Diana Rhoten (Startl), Chris Ackermann (NY Times R&D)

Emcee: Debbie Berebichez (The Science Babe)

Program:

6:00-6:45pm: Demo Tables & Meet the Students/Mentors

6:55-7:05pm: Opening Remarks

7:05-7:15pm: Keynote

7:15-8:45pm: Pitch & Demo Presentations

8:45-8:55pm: Keynote

8:55-9:00pm: Winners Announced

9:00-9:30pm: Networking & Meet the Students/Mentors

More About Technovation Challenge:

The Technovation Challenge is a program of Iridescent, a 501c3 non-profit which provides STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education for underserved and underrepresented youth.

The Technovation Challenge program was founded in 2009 by Anuranjita Tewary, who wanted to offer young women the experience of participating in a “start-up company” and understand what it takes to be a high-tech entrepreneur.  The pilot program was run in the spring of 2010, with 45 girls and 25 mentors from all over Silicon Valley.  The Technovation Challenge has now expanded to New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mountain View and Berkeley, CA, supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).  View our current programs here.

The mission of the Technovation Challenge is to promote women in technology by giving girls the skills and confidence they need to be successful in computer science and entrepreneurship.  We aim to inspire girls to see themselves not just as users of technology, but as inventors, designers, builders and entrepreneurs.

In our course, students design a mobile phone app prototype using the Google App Inventor for Android. They work with a small team of girls, each team supported by a professional high-tech female mentor and an undergraduate computer science student (all female).  The girls learn to think like entrepreneurs, generate innovative ideas, and write business plans.  Our courses are hosted by high-tech companies, so girls are able to experience what it’s like to work and learn in a high-tech environment.

The New York City course started in February and has been held weekly at Google NYC.  Mentors in our program this year include women from Girl Develop It, Google, ESPN Mobile, Fox News Mobile, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.  Undergraduate and graduate students mentors come from NYU, Columbia, CCNY, The Cooper Union, City Tech, and even the University of Genoa in Italy!  These amazing women have volunteered 36 hours of their own time to coach and inspire the girls in computer science and high-tech entrepreneurship.  We've also worked hard to ensure that underserved high school students have the opportunity to participate in our program.  About 95% of the girls in NYC's Technovation Challenge program, ranging from grades 9-12, are participating through need-based scholarships.

See last year's Pitch Night video here.

View our recent article in PC World's Geek Tech blog here.

Special thanks to Paperless Post for creating and hosting the snazzy invitations that brought you here! Our very own Technovation Challenge mentor Vanessa Hurst (@DBNess) is a database engineer at Paperless Post.