Nigora Dautova, a 19-year-old student at the Kyrgyz Technical University, learned python and became the head of a development studio at the Codify group of IT companies.

Two years ago, after graduating from high school in Karakol, Nigora did not know what she wanted to become. That summer, as part of the Techaim program, various IT professionals came to Karakol to conduct a meet-up for girls. It was then that Nigora realized she wanted to develop and work in IT. "When I was in school, I considered myself a humanities student, emphasized languages and participated in district and regional Olympiads in history and foreign languages. I was sure I had no aptitude for the sciences. I was going to become a linguist or a translator."

When she moved to Bishkek for university, Nigora decided to also study computer programming and entered Neobis, where she began learning the Python programming language. After studying for over a year and getting a lot of practice, Nigora decided to start making money on commercial projects and applied for an internship at Codify, where she has been working for more than nine months. In the beginning, she worked with children and mentees that pushed her to work as a Python programming language teacher in the Minecraft environment, during which Nigora taught more than a hundred children.

“At first I was very afraid to go into IT because it seemed difficult to join the society of engineers as I thought that there were only guys there. But when I came to Neobis, my doubts disappeared because I was surrounded by cool people. There were really a lot of guys, but they helped and supported me. When I came to Codify, I was greeted by a team that consisted mainly of bright women who still inspire me a lot. When I was faced with the choice of my future profession, girls inspired me. Now I really enjoy teaching and motivating little girls and boys."

Nigora's enthusiasm, dedication and hard work resulted in success and she received an offer to develop a startup called GiftMe. Having assembled a whole IT team with Codify students: project manager, web designer, tester, graphic designer, backend and frontend developers, the project was completed in a short time under her supervision. After completing her project with GiftMe, Nigora began helping startups that have socially significant ideas but lack the funds to develop by assembling and leading IT teams. An example is the first prototype of the Semantir service, which was created under the leadership of Nigora when the founders did not have the resources for implementation. A few months later, Semantir took first place in the #DevelopMyCommunity hackathon organized by UNDP.

As part of her work with students, Nigora developed a methodology for students in their training to become IT professionals. The basis of this methodology is accelerating learning through educational games and working on real projects, where students can apply concepts they have learned in real examples. Nigora also created a technical support department for students to help them with their homework and explain difficult concepts. Thanks to this methodology and technical support, the number of students who successfully found employment after the training courses has doubled.