Connecting Communities. Creating Opportunities.
Our First
Decade
MAR 2012 
Maurya Couvares comes up with the idea for Code Nation (at the time, our organization was called ScriptEd) and calls her friend, Liz Davidson Pisacreta, to share the idea. The two get to work on creating the first curriculum, recruiting first volunteers for the organization, and securing the first school partner: Harlem Village Academy.
JUL 2012
ScriptEd co-founders, Maurya and Liz, officially incorporate ScriptEd as a nonprofit in the state of New York, and hold their first fundraiser at a bar with friends in New York City to celebrate. They raise approximately $5,000! Maurya, Liz, and their friend Michelle form the first ScriptEd Board of Directors at the time of incorporation.
OCT 2012
The first after school program is offered at Harlem Village Academy in New York City to 15 students, teaching HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Read more.
JAN 2013
Maurya and Liz expand the new program to Cristo Rey New York High School, and recruit additional volunteers to support programming. Maurya and Liz also work with pro bono attorneys to file the organization’s tax exempt status with the IRS.
FEB 2013
Maurya and Liz are honored with the Dewey Winburne Community Service Award. Dewey Winburne was one of the original co-founders of the SXSW Interactive Festival and he believed that technology could bridge the digital divide. Recipients are recognized for using digital technology to help others. Read more.
MAY 2013
Maurya and Liz host ScriptEd’s first ever Hackathon at Teach for America’s Offices in New York City.
JUN 2013
Code Nation co-founder Maurya shares her “why,” at TEDxNYED. Watch here.
JUN 2013
Students are placed in summer internships for the first time at partner companies including About.com, American Express, JPMorgan Chase and Thrillist. Maurya, Liz, and ScriptEd’s first two volunteers Andrew and Kevin, visit the White House to receive the “Champions of Change for Tech Inclusion” Award from the Obama Administration and Teach For America’s Social Innovation Award.
SEP 2013
ScriptEd now has 25 volunteers, and the after-school program expands to Brooklyn. Josh Silverman, President of Consumer Products and Services at American Express, and future CEO of Etsy, joins Code Nation as the chairman of the Board of Directors. With funding from Josh, American Express and the Wooden Nickel Foundation, Maurya steps down from her full-time job elsewhere and begins working for ScriptEd full-time as their first Executive Director and CEO.
OCT 2013
Becca Novak, Code Nation’s future CEO, joins ScriptEd as an Education Manager and authors an op-ed in the Huffington Post about how computer science education benefits everyone.Read more here. Maurya and Becca spend the first half of the school year working from coffee shops (and wherever they can find space!). By the winter, they secure ScriptEd’s first office space in the financial district.
By the beginning of the 2014-15 school year, ScriptEd has taught its foundational course to 70 students across 6 New York City schools. Today, many of those first students have gone on to pursue careers in technology, return to Code Nation as volunteers, or even become founders of startups.
MAY 2014
Students from ScriptEd's first partner schools across New York say thank you to their classroom volunteers at the end of the 2013-14 school year.
JUN 2014
ScriptEd’s internship program expands to offer on-site experiential learning at 27 companies, including WeWork, Rent the Runway, and Adobe.
People who know how to code hold the keys to our future.
People who know how to code hold the keys to our future.— Maurya Couvares
SEP 2014
ScriptEd hires two more new full-time employees in New York, expanding the team, representing new and exciting growth for the organization.
DEC 2014
The New York Business Journal names Maurya as an honoree for its inaugural Women of Influence Awards. The program honors women business leaders in the New York City area who innovate, succeed and pay it forward.
SEP 2015
For the first time, the second year Fellowship class is taught to students. ScriptEd surpasses teaching more than 350 students and launches its first organization-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) trainings in partnership with Joliz Cedeño, current Managing Director in New York, and we begin to pave the way to becoming an anti-racist, pro-Black organization.
During the 2014-15 school year, ScriptEd expands to 13 schools across the city. In the 2015-16 school year, ScriptEd expands to reach 30 schools and now has 18 full time-employees.
JUN 2016
ScriptEd places 75 students in the summer internship program - its biggest class of interns ever!
SEP 2016
By the fall of 2016, ScriptEd is offering Fellowship classes at Foursquare, Google, IEX Group Inc.,Teachers Pay Teachers, and Uber.
By the end of the 2016-17 school year, ScriptEd has taught more than 1,000 students how to code. ScriptEd also launches a one semester pilot program in San Francisco with three high schools, serving nearly 50 students and hosts a bi-coastal Hackathon.
MAY 2017
ScriptEd wins the MIT Solve Award, as a solver team in the Youth, Skills, and the Workforce of the Future Challenge. This award is focused on teaching youth the skills needed to prepare them for the workforce of the 21st century.
SEP 2017
ScriptEd launches in the Bay Area, partnering with 11 schools in San Francisco and Oakland, and teaches nearly 250 students within the first year!
MAY 2018
ScriptEd has more than 250 volunteers (that’s 10 times more than just 5 years ago!) from some of the biggest names in tech teaching computer science in classrooms in New York City, San Francisco, and Oakland.
OCT 2018
ScriptEd changes its name to Code Nation!
The name change reflects our transformation into a leading provider of technology education and workforce development programs in under-resourced schools, and our ambitions to grow to a national organization. Read more.
Through our new brand, we hope to send a powerful message about the strength of our community, and empower our alumni to build careers where they can fulfill their full economic, social, and creative potential.
— Maurya Couvares
FEB 2019
Maurya steps down as Code Nation’s CEO, and Becca Novak steps into her role as Code Nation’s second woman leader. Read more.
During the 2014-15 school year, ScriptEd expands to 13 schools across the city. In the 2015-2016 school year, ScriptEd expands to reach 30 schools and now has 18 full-time employees.
JUL 2019
Code Nation partners with Eat. Play. Learn., Stephen and Ayesha Curry’s foundation that aims to unlock the potential of underprivileged children through core programs focused on nutrition, education and physical activity. Read more.
JAN 2020
Code Nation launches in Chicago with more than 150 students taught at 5 partner schools in the first year, and launches a weekend workshop that engages students from more than 20 Chicago Public Schools!
MAR 2020
Code Nation pivots all of its programs to an online format at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and continues to offer programs in the Bay Area, Chicago, and New York. Read more.
MAY 2020
Code Nation hosts its first ever virtual Hackathon!
JUN 2020
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and amidst a global pandemic, Code Nation is continuously learning to grow, and makes an open, strong, and important commitment as an anti-racist, pro-Black organization, placing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at the core of its work every day.
JAN 2021
Code Nation is a grantee of PropelNext, a funding program that offers nonprofits data driven insights and practices to maximize impact on young peoples' lives.
Code Nation launches its first program for alums, the Career Launch Intensive, where participants learn interview skills, build their resumes, and grow in a group with their peers during weekly online meetups.
NOV 2021
Code Nation is a finalist in Google’s Bay Area Impact Challenge.
By the end of the 2020-21 school year, more than 4,800 students have taken at least one class with Code Nation, and more than 1,400 tech professionals have volunteered in classrooms in the Bay Area, Chicago, and New York.
JAN 2022
Code Nation CEO Becca Novak announces she will step down from her role and Code Nation begins the nationwide search for a new leader. The Career Launch Intensive welcomes 26 alums in the newest cohorts, and a Code Nation Alumni Council is formed.
MAY 2022
Code Nation hosts the first in-person event for New York City based Code Nation alums - building a foundation for an alum network and community in the city.
JUN 2022
Chicago hosts an in-person Hackathon with the theme, Best of Chicago! This is the first in-person event since moving programs to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Read more.
OCT 2022
Code Nation celebrates its 10th year of serving students (more here), and welcomes new leaders - CEO, Ron Summers and President, Kellie Hinkle.
Read more.
Today, Code Nation has served 7,485 students in 97 schools and partnered with 145 companies across 3 regions: the Bay Area, Chicago, and New York. We are building a movement to help more young people grow from tech lovers into tech leaders, with a focus on inspiring the next generation who will carry on the work of building a more inclusive industry and make technology that better serves everyone.
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community and other ways to get involved!
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Follow Us!
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community and other ways to get involved!
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