“I think it is a really interesting situation to be in because you are placed in an underrepresented sector of technology,” says Jayda Murray, a winner of National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Aspire IT Leadership Grant.
Jayda was granted $3,000 to run a two-week-long summer Girls’ Game Jam (which was held online over Zoom and Google Classroom) where she taught middle and high schoolers how to build their own visual novel video games. “I was really excited, especially since it would allow me the opportunity to facilitate such an educational program,” says Jayda, who lived in the New York/Connecticut area at the time. “We had to postpone it because we moved here to Memphis. It was a little bit of a weird situation but we were still able to get such a huge amount of girls during that time considering the circumstances.” She is proud that each camper left with the skills needed to code their own basic game.
“I've been interested in coding and technology since I was 10 years old when I first found the video game, Kingdom Hearts. I saw one of the scenes from the video games and I really thought, ‘Wow I want to do this,’” says Jayda. She wants to develop games to target different social issues within various communities and between the U.S. and Japan. “I want to double major in Computer Science and Game Development and a minor in Japanese. So all of these things come together for my ultimate goal which is starting a game studio working between the United States and Japan.”
Jayda is well on the path to her ultimate goal with many awards under her belt, such as the Congressional App Award, CodeCrew 2020 Summer Hackathon, Global Sports Tech Youth Challenge, and STEAM Scholarship by the National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS).
“The Ted Talk I did last year was along the lines of highlighting the need for diversity within the gaming industry,” says Jayda who noticed that the technology industry, especially gaming, lacks female representation. “To be the person who is making up a number [of women in technology] which is very low and to be able to give the opportunity back to girls like myself, to give them that opportunity to invade that space as well, is really interesting.”
Jayda recently spoke on two panels at the Youth 4 Youth Summit on the issue for the need for diversity in the gaming industry. In addition, she has also worked with the St. Jude Children’s Hospital fund development team to develop a video game for the donors.
For more information on NSHSS, visit nshss.org