Sophie Deen

Sophie Deen is a children's author and award-winning leader in the field of coding for young people. She is the CEO of Bright Little Labs, an education company that makes educational gender-neutral toys and materials.

Sophie Deen
Deen in 2017
EducationLaw, 2005
Alma materUniversity of Sheffield
Known forChildren's books

Early life

Deen attended Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls from 1989 until 1999 leaving after GCSEs. She received a bachelor's degree in Law at the University of Sheffield in 2005, before completing a Legal Practise Course at The College of Law.[1]

Career

Deen worked as a lawyer at Herbert Smith Freehills, before joining SamKnows.[1] Deen realised she wanted to work with children, and became a school counsellor with Place2Be.[2][3]

She worked for Code Club, where she helped to introduce the new coding curriculum for the United Kingdom with Google and the Department for Education.[4] In 2014 Deen was appointed head of Code Club Pro, which ran training sessions for teachers.[5][6] At Code Club Deen recognised a large group of young people who could not engage.[7]

In 2015 Deen founded Bright Little Labs, who use 'edutaining' stories to get children to learn to code.[8][4] Following a survey of over 1,000 people, Deen found the negative stereotypes in technology are reflected in children's cartoons – and so Bright Little Labs created Detective Dot.[9][10] In an interview with The Guardian, she said that "by age eight, children think that some things are for boys, some things are for girls – from toys to future careers".[11] Her research revealed that "In kids’ cartoons under three per cent of characters are black,".[12] The project raised £14,500 on Kickstarter.[13] It has since reach over 30 countries worldwide.[14] Deen was voted Computer Weekly’s Rising Star at Women in IT 2015.[15] Bright Little Labs was selected by HundrED as one of the most innovative practises in education in the world.[16]

Detective Dot works for the Children's Intelligence Agency (CIA), and invites readers to "become agents, go on missions and do investigations,".[7] Dot's challenges are inspired by citizen science and help young people to engage with data in a real-world way.[17] Bright Little Labs are working with educators, illustrators and writers to create stories and content linked to the computer science curriculum.[18] In 2017 it was listed by The Independent as one of the "10 best coding toys".[19][20]

Deen is the CEO of Bright Little Labs, which became part of Bethnal Green Ventures in 2016.[21][22] Deen was listed in the BIMA Top 100 Awards for the digital industry's brightest stars in 2016 and 2017.[23] Bright Little Labs won the EDF Energy "Pulse Award".[24][25][26]

In 2017 she delivered a TEDx talk at Goodenough College, "The robot revolution – a survival guide for kids".[27][28] She won the 2017 FDM Group Start-up Founder of the Year Award.[29][30] She was listed in the Computer Weekly Top 50 Most Influential Women in Tech shortlist in 2018 and 2019[31][32]

gollark: Are you meaning something like "distinct land areas"?
gollark: I erase my memory at random, yes.
gollark: It is nice to be able to walk or publicly transport to places instead of going by car slowly.
gollark: At least, I like them and I know many people who do.
gollark: Dense cities good, actually?

References
  1. "Sophie Deen – Linked In". Linked In. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  2. "Sophie Deen – Founder @ Bright Little Labs | Crunchbase". Crunchbase. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  3. "Previous everywoman award winner Sophie Deen talks tech – WITsend". itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  4. Caines, Matthew (24 February 2017). "Detective Dot creator: 'Working with kids is the best part of the job'". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  5. "Sophie Deen, Head of Code Club Pro talks to BBC Radio Manchester". Audioboom. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  6. "The changing computing curriculum – eat, sleep, code, repeat – Firefly". Firefly. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  7. "Detective Dot turns your children into spies (who can code)". The Memo. 24 May 2017. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  8. "Sophie Deen". angel.co. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  9. John, Merlin. "Detective Dot has plans for gumshoe pupils". agent4change.net. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  10. "Detective Dot: Research & Stats". Google Docs. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  11. Card, Jon (5 December 2016). "Robots beware, kids are in training for the jobs of tomorrow". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  12. "'Kids will be cast aside if they can't use tech'". BusinessCloud.co.uk. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  13. "Detective Dot – Adventure stories for a fairer world". Kickstarter. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  14. "Sophie Deen – Emerge Conference". emergeconference.co.uk. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  15. "Sophie Deen, CEO at Bright Little Labs – Most influential women in UK IT: Rising Stars 2015". Computer Weekly. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  16. "Sophie Deen: Education Should Teach Us the Impact We Could Have". hundred.org. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  17. "Children's books must take the lead in promoting tech diversity | The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  18. XPRIZE (5 December 2015). "Teaching Kids to Understand Global Issues". HuffPost. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  19. "10 best coding toys". The Independent. 31 October 2017. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  20. "100 of the best educational toys: KS2". TheSchoolRun. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  21. "Detective Dot: showing kids what's what – Hackney Citizen". hackneycitizen.co.uk. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  22. "Bright Little Labs | Bethnal Green Ventures". bethnalgreenventures.com. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  23. "BIMA 100 2017". Issuu. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  24. "The EDF Pulse Awards reveal the best of local innovation". EDF France. 7 March 2017. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  25. "EDF Energy Pulse Awards". EDF Energy. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  26. EDF Energy (24 February 2017), Pulse Awards: Detective Dot – Inspiring the Next Science Generation, retrieved 1 March 2018
  27. "2017 Speakers – TEDxGoodenoughCollege". tedxgoodenoughcollege.com. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  28. TEDx Talks (10 August 2017), The robot revolution – a survival guide for kids | Sophie Deen | TEDxGoodenoughCollege, retrieved 1 March 2018
  29. "Tech industry's brightest stars celebrated at 2017 FDM everywoman in Technology Awards". Everywoman. 8 February 2017. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  30. "FDM Everywoman in Technology Awards shine a light on the brightest female stars in Tech". creativepool.com. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  31. "34. Sophie Deen, CEO, Bright Little Labs – The 50 Most Influential Women in UK Tech 2017". Computer Weekly. Retrieved 1 March 2018.
  32. "Computer Weekly announces the Most Influential Women in UK Tech 2019". Computer Weekly. Retrieved 19 October 2019.
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