Northrop Grumman partners with Black Codher to boost black female tech skills and employment

By Nicky Godding

24 February 2022

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Northrop Grumman in the UK (NGUK) has partnered with Niyo Network on their Black Codher Bootcamp, a charitable initiative aimed at engaging, encouraging and recruiting more black women to take up rewarding new tech-focussed careers.

The majority of the Northrop Grumman team supporting this initiative are based in Cheltenham.

As part of the collaboration, NGUK will support Black Codher’s 30-week long Bootcamp, which increases learners’ technical skills across software programming and development. The company will also develop participants’ employability, providing career and interview advice. On completion of the Bootcamp NGUK aspires to make offers of employment to participants.

Dawn Ohlson, Technical Director, National Security Solutions, Northrop Grumman UK, said: “Across Northrop Grumman we want to attract and retain a diverse range of people to bring different thinking and talents to solve our customers’ challenges. Working with Black Codher to deliver the Bootcamp opens the door to careers in tech for more black women, who we want to support to realise their potential.”

Oyinkansola Adebayo, CEO & Founder, Niyo Network, added: “We are super excited to partner with NGUK on our Black Codher Bootcamp, We have upskilled over 250 women since March 2020 through our different Bootcamps (Black Codher & Black Disruptor) and are excited that many women who would have been otherwise unemployed or in low skilled employment can now move on to work in companies like NGUK to continue to provide innovative solutions for global security.”

Black women remain heavily underrepresented in the technology industry. According to Swindon-based BCS (The Chartered Institute of IT) they make up less than one per cent of the tech workforce in the US and UK. Access to training, skills development and mentorship remains a key obstacle however more than 70 per cent of Black Codher’s learners have successfully career changed into tech roles, with the others continuing with education.

In 2020, as part of West Midland Combined Authority’s initiative for economic empowerment for the unemployed and the low-skilled employed to progress into digital occupations, Niyo Enterprise and Coding Black Females partnered to put on a 30-week Coding Bootcamp for 50 black women over 18, unemployed or employed with a salary of under £25,000. Since then, it has trained more black women in software engineering.

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.