Code.org® is a non-profit dedicated to expanding access to computer science and increasing participation by women and underrepresented minorities. The organization works directly with school districts to provide curriculum and teacher resources to ensure that every student has the opportunity to learn computer science, just like biology, chemistry, or algebra. I recently spoke with Hadi Partovi, founder of Code.org, about his vision for Code.org, his results, and why we should support immigrant businesses. To hear more from Hadi, join us at the Small Business Essentials keynote at Dreamforce.

What inspired you, a successful entrepreneur, to start an educational nonprofit?

Starting Code.org had a lot to do with my own personal story. When I was a child my family immigrated here from Iran. We had very little. My father, who had been a theoretical nuclear physicist in Iran, taught me to code when I was only ten years old on a Commodore 64. With just that experience, I was able to get an internship in the ninth grade at a tech company while all of my friends were waiting tables.

Fast forward to the future. After working in tech for some time, I’d been thinking for almost a decade about how try to make the same opportunities that I had available to more kids. But I never quite got to it. And then, in October 2011, Steve Jobs died. He was only 10-15 years older than I am. At that point I started to think really hard about what my legacy would be in the world. That’s when I decided it was time to get started with Code.org.

Like any new business entering a market, you faced challenges to implement your vision through the school system. How did you figure out what was the right delivery model for Code.org?

When I founded Code.org, people had a lot of suggestions for how we could accomplish our goals — creating after school programs, starting a dedicated school, creating online courses. They were all ignoring the fact that we have a giant trillion-dollar-a-year-program, that millions of kids already go to... Nobody suggested America’s existing school systems because nobody thought that you could possibly do this.

I was seriously looking into the after-school idea when a teacher told me that if we pursued after school we’d just perpetuate the problem. That the kids who were able to attend the program would benefit and that those that couldn’t wouldn’t. We needed to make programs available to every school teacher and every student. It’s a real joy that America’s teachers want to and can learn computer science, too.

Are you seeing results?

Yes! We've partnered with 120 of the largest school districts to add computer science to the curriculums and we’ve taught more than 9 million girls to code! I’m also really excited about this: We launched a new Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science class in the fall of 2016, with the first new exam in spring of 2017. 73% of students in our classrooms passed the exam, which is incredible, especially since many of the teachers didn’t know computer science and hadn’t taught it before. They all succeeded through their own passion and our materials. That's a major success for the American school system that we should all be celebrating.

How are the demographics of computer science changing thanks to organizations like Code.org and others? 

Building diversity in the tech world is one of our chief motivators. It’s a field that’s essentially dominated by white, upper-middle-class men. Equal opportunity is a cornerstone of the American dream, but it’s not shown in the fastest-growing, best-paying fields. There have been many efforts to improve diversity in computer science, but it’s impossible to totally balance the scales without getting the school systems involved. It’s because we’ve worked through the school systems that we’ve been able to help more than 9 million girls learn to code. That’s a huge step toward levelling the playing field in computer science.

Immigration is a hot topic today; as an immigrant and successful entrepreneur yourself, what's your perspective on how immigrants are contributing to our country?

You’ve probably seen the data: immigrants have founded 51% of the billion-dollar startups in the U.S. As an Iranian immigrant, I’m particularly proud because there are so many Iranian entrepreneurs, including the new CEO of Uber, founders of Dropbox and eBay, and the chairman of Twitter, just to name a few. The tech industry has been very welcoming to the immigrants who created these companies, and it’s vital that we stay welcoming if the U.S. is going to maintain our leadership position in the world.

At the same time, it’s un-American not to teach our own kids and give them the opportunity to fill tech jobs. We can certainly keep our doors open and do a better job of teaching our kids.

We’re excited about the opportunities that Code.org creates. How can we support your mission?

Fans of Code.org can support our mission in many different ways, such as volunteering in a classroom, buying a Code Like A Girl T-shirt, donating money, helping translate our curriculum, or working as a volunteer engineer in our open source code base. See all the options at http://code.org/help

You can also organize an Hour of Code at your school, a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify "code" and to show that anybody can learn the basics. The Hour of Code takes place each year during Computer Science Education Week. The 2017 Computer Science Education Week will be December 4-10, but you can host an Hour of Code all year round.

To hear more from Hadi, join us at Dreamforce at the Small Business Essentials Keynote on Tuesday, November 7, at 11:30 a.m. at Moscone West. Can’t make it to San Francisco? Tune into the keynote and all the action of Dreamforce on Salesforce Live.

Salesforce can help you find customers, win their businesses, and keep them happy so you can grow your business faster than ever. Learn more about our small business CRM solutions or follow us on twitter @SalesforceSMB and join the conversation with #SalesforceGROW.