Quoting Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and former First Lady Michelle Obama as her inspirations, little Samaira Mehta is not your usual 10-year-old. In fact, she is the founder and CEO CoderBunnyz, a company that makes games that help teach kids how to code.
Silicon Valley-based Samaira is gaining international acclaim as she conducts workshops along with her father in the US to teach more kids coding. When asked about what led her to this path, Samaira told a web portal in an interview, “I would probably say that my love for computer programming and board game got me into what I am doing now. I always loved board games and I always loved computer programming, but I didn’t like the fact that I had to both of them separately, so I thought if I can’t bring board game onto a computer coding screen, so why not bring the computer coding to a board game. And that’s when I got the idea to create a coding board game, and that’s what I’m doing today.”
Now, Samaira has launched a game for kids that teaches them how to code using artificial intelligence. Called CoderMindz, this is reportedly the first ever AI board game.
One of the highlights in Samaira’s career is when she met Google’s Chief Culture Officer, Stacy Sullivan, after a workshop. Reportedly, Sullivan was so impressed by Samaira, that she offered the young prodigy a job when she finished college. Interestingly, ambitious Samaira told Sullivan that she was happy being an entrepreneur.
She also met Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Halloween when she went trick-or-treating in his neighbourhood and took the opportunity to talk to him about her coding work.
