Code breaker: cracking the tech industry glass ceiling

Ally Watson, co-founder of the women's technology initiative Code Like a Girl, grew up in council flats in the fierce, unemployment-scarred town of Airdrie, Scotland. "The kids I would go to school with, violence was just part and parcel of their day-to-day lives," she says. "I spent a lot of my time at lunchtimes in the art department, keeping my head down.

"I had a really rough patch at school," she says. For a moment, her voice cracks and her eyes swim. "There was just continual violence. Bad things happened all the time in our neighbourhood. Every week the police were down."

Watson, 29, was named by The Sydney Morning Herald as one of 2017's most influential female entrepreneurs, for her work inspiring and supporting girls and women to follow careers in coding.

Normally, I would rather sit with my head in a bucket of fish than spend an hour talking with a coder, but Watson is a warm, compelling speaker, and we're having lunch at Melbourne's cheerfully fashionable Garden State Hotel, in a grill restaurant that is part art deco, part exposed-industrial chic. Read more