Who Are we?

Welcome to Code&. A Cape Town based community for women and other femme identifying members of the tech space to come together and share experiences and ideas. Founded in 2025 by Liza Cullis and Pippa Hillebrand, the space is intended to be safe, friendly, and different to what you experience in the daily grind at work.

An Interview with Liza

Q: Can you give a brief intro to who you are and what you do?

A: My name is Liza Cullis and I am currently a working as a Platform Developer at Electrum Software! I love learning new things - which may be why my past 3 roles have all been in completely different fields and skill sets - I’m definitely more of a generalist than a specialist. I’m also a big extrovert and love people - hearing other people’s stories is always super fascinating to me!

Q: Why did you want to start a femme in tech community?

A: So I have to say a lot of the inspiration to create this community was inspired by talks I listened to at conferences! The first was the women in tech panel discussion at the AWS summit in 2024. It was such an awesome experience to hear these incredibly successful women talk about all the struggles they faced and how they overcame them. I came aways from this feeling super inspired and in my role at the time I had no women in my team and I felt that difference - the effort it took to try to relate and fit in with the people around me - and it all felt like work. So I really wanted a place where I could feel like I belong and that’s where the idea started forming.

Q: Why Code& as the name?

A: I was looking for a name that could communicate the point of the community - a place to learn from each other and build each other up. I had recently heard of the improve principle “yes, and…” which is used to allow people in improv build onto what the other person is saying to allow the improv piece to flow well. And this seemed like what I was trying to create within the community!

Q: What excites you most about this community?

A: I think the biggest thing for me is to see people build relationships with other people in the community - and for people to have a place to openly talk about the struggles they have faced with people who can support and help them!

Q: Do you have any concerns or worries?

A: I think the biggest concern right now is making sure we are building a community that actually serves those who are in the community. Giving up your evenings to network and do work-related things is not a easy ask - so I really want to make sure that when people do give up their time, its worth it and that they feel excited to come to the next one!

An Interview with Pippa

Q: Can you give a brief intro to who you are and what you do?

A: Sure. Hi, I’m Pippa. I’m a senior backend/DevOps software engineer with a little more than ten years experience. I don’t just write code and build systems, I also write a (mostly) technical blog, and speak at the occasional conference.

Q: Why did you want to start a femme in tech community?

A: Community is really important to humans. We need the connection and the space to feel like we belong. A space to speak with others who have shared struggles and interests. The combination of femme and tech is one where we can have deeply technical content (which my nerdy brain loves) and yet also be emotionally open, and address the very real challenges we face.

Q: Why Code& as the name?

A: That was all Liza. She came up with that idea, I said yes, and let’s be more inclusive by saying Femme not Women.

Q: What excites you most about this community?

A: Giving people who are usually the only femme face in the room a chance to network with others who have experienced the same thing. We’ve had a couple of events so far, and watching as people connect with one another in the space has been an absolute joy. To be able to expand this to allow each of these ladies and enbies the chance to grow their own careers makes me really happy.

Q: Do you have any concerns?

A: I’ve been around the block enough times to pick up some cynicism, so I do have concerns about not building sustainably. We mitigate those by knowing the risk, and taking action to ensure Liza and I have the support we need. It takes a community to build a community. Additionally, building a safe space is hard, and I want to make sure that our community is comfortable when we have events. Which may mean taking a hard line on policy decisions as we move forwards.

What do we do?

Code& is hosting in person meetups in Cape Town every two months where attendees are given the space to chat, build connections, and get to know one another. We then usually have a technical or semi-technical talk by a member of the community, followed by some final networking and conversation.

So far these have been rewarding evenings of chatter and with far too much food available thanks to the generosity of our sponsors (who also cater as if there will be 30 men in attendance).

We dream of having space for people to join in with async community groups via social media like LinkedIn, slack, and WhatsApp but none of us like spam. So at best there is a reminder going out about events and maybe some questions every now and then. Joining the meetups and community can be a great place to find mentors/mentees and maybe just learn something new from the talk.

Who is welcome in the space?

Anyone who identifies as female or femme is welcome. We had to think long and hard about excluding men, but eventually decided that it is better to have a safe space where we can discuss anything and everything at risk of leaving out 80% of the tech community. The idea is that in a community space we can actively work to build up the under-represented femme side of technology, celebrating the women who are succeeding in a male dominated industry. As a community there is no financial or business impact by being gender specific — we will not be impacting people’s hiring decisions for example. This gives us the freedom to draw a line and build up those who otherwise might not have a voice.

I’m FIT and I fit

You’ll see this on a lot of what we do. We want to own our femininity — whatever that means for each individual. To be proud of the fact that we are femme presenting members of the tech community, and that we fit in this space. We are not intruders or otherwise breaking through barriers. We are where we are supposed to be, and we are leaders in this space in our own right. Also, FIT is a much better acronym that WIT when it comes to thinking up snazzy titles or fun catch phrases.