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Kathryn Parsons

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Full Name
  
Kathryn Parsons

Name
  
Kathryn Parsons

Years active
  
2011—present


Occupation
  
Co-CEO of Decoded

Nationality
  
British

Partner
  
Michael Acton Smith

Kathryn Parsons Work Life Kathryn Parsons CoFounder Of Decoded

Born
  
1982 (age 32–33)
Highgate, London, United Kingdom

Kathryn Parsons - Co-Founder & CEO of Decoded


Kathryn Parsons (born 1982) is a British tech entrepreneur. She is the co-founder and co-CEO of Decoded, a London-based tech startup which aims to increase digital literacy. Decoded's signature one-day course claims to train participants without any background in computers to "code in a day".

Contents

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Kathryn parsons decoded speaking at the iod annual convention 2014


Early life and education

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Kathryn Parsons grew up in Highgate, where she still resides. She was interested in languages in her youth and studied Japanese in night classes at the School of Oriental and African Studies. From 2000 to 2003 she studied classical languages, literatures, and linguistics at Downing College, Cambridge, graduating with a BA in Classics.

Career

Kathryn Parsons 19 Kathryn Parsons Founder Decoded Photo gallery Top

From 2004 to 2007 Parsons worked as UK head of channel planning for Ogilvy. In 2008 she co-founded an advertising agency, Scarlett Mark, which applied digital technology to branding; one of its notable brands was the virtual/real-world character "Cherry Girl" for MTV.

Decoded

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In January 2011 Parsons, together with Alasdair Blackwell, Steve Henry, and Richard Peters, founded Decoded to help increase digital literacy. Each of the founders provided start-up funding. After eight months of testing the curriculum the Shoreditch-based company started teaching the course, which claims to teach participants to "code in a day". It conducted its first workshop for 10 participants in August 2011. By the end of the workshop, participants – who may be complete novices at coding – can build their own app, using programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Kathryn Parsons Kathryn Parsons Decoded The Story for Tech City UK

As of 2013, Decoded had been attended by 2,500 employees from over 450 companies; attendance had risen to over 8,000 by September 2014. Large clients, who send "scores of employees" to take the course, include Google, eBay, and Microsoft; other participating companies include "the creative departments of advertising agencies, investment banks and entertainment firms". Employees of Facebook, BBC, Guardian Media Group, Accenture, TalkTalk, Unilever, WPP, UBS, Lloyd's of London, Thomas Cook, and McKinsey & Company have also taken the course. Additionally, over 500 teachers have participated. Decoded has opened branches in New York City and Sydney, and has "pop up" locations in 30 cities, including Shanghai, Hong Kong, Melbourne, and Los Angeles.

Kathryn Parsons The Complete Woman Kathryn Parsons

In addition to its Code in a Day workshop, Decoded offers Data in a Day, Hacker in a Day, Innovation in a Day and Tech in a Day. It has also created "codeED in a day" for teachers, and open-sources its materials online for use by UK schoolteachers. In spring 2014, the Guardian Media Group bought a 15 percent stake in Decoded.

Honours and awards

In 2012 Parsons became the first winner in two categories in Red magazine's Hot Women's Award. She won in both UK Start-Up Entrepreneur of the Year and Digital Business of the Year.

In 2013 she received the Veuve Clicquot New Generation Award and the Women of the Future award in Technology. She was named one of the 30 Most Important Women in Tech Under 30 by Business Insider, one of the 35 Women Under 35 by Management Today, one of The 1000 – London's Most Influential People 2014: Tech stars by the Evening Standard, one of the "Ten women in tech you need to meet" by The Guardian, and a "Rising Star" in Computer Weekly's UKtech 50.

In 2014 she won Marie Claire magazine's Women At The Top award for top tech pioneer and was included on The Sunday Times's Britain's Top 30 Female Power List and The Telegraph's Britons of the Year 2014. In March 2014 Parsons was named an ambassador of Tech City by London mayor Boris Johnson.

In 2015 the Evening Standard included her on their Progress 1000: London's Most Influential People – Digerati, and the Inspiring Fifty organisation named her one of the Fifty Most Inspiring Women in European Tech.

Personal

Parsons speaks Japanese, Mandarin, French and Italian.

In August 2015 Parsons revealed that she had imposed a personal ban on using email at work for three months, relying on the Slack real-time messaging system to communicate with her team. After three months, she began accepting external emails but continued to refrain from internal email communication.

References

Kathryn Parsons Wikipedia