Hortense is the founder of Codi, a combination between a coding bootcamp and a leadership course based in Beirut, Lebanon. Codi is the first programme to foster digital education for underprivileged youth in Lebanon. Its mission is to use coding & programming to enable inclusion and employment, and as a catalyst for social innovation and diversity. The school is free for students and targets young individuals who have a passion and strong motivation for digital and want to build a career in technology but lack the financial means to pursue a traditional education.

Prior to that Hortense spent four years as a strategy consultant in Private Equity at The Boston Consulting Group. During that time, she co-founded Unicef NEXTGen, a global Unicef initiative bringing together diverse groups of young professionals, committed to helping transform the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children.

Joseph is the Programme Director at Codi, responsible for all operations across Codi activities (incl. Administration & Logistics, IT, Finance & Fundraising, Marketing & Social Media). He is also responsible for relationships with our Employment partners, mainly through project and internship opportunities with current students. Outside Codi, Joseph consults pro-bono as a sales consultant for various software companies.

Joseph is passionate about Codi because he believes in the power of programming as a tool to building a better future and a long term sustainable career. His mission: to inspire and empower.

Before Codi, Joseph worked as an Operations Manager across multiple sectors (IT, Retail, Software) and has over ten years’ experience. He holds a B.Sc. in Management Information Systems and an MBA from AUST (Beirut, Lebanon).

Samar is the lead trainer at Codi and runs the Core Full-Stack Web Development programme, she is responsible for delivering the core competencies needed for web development to the students.

Samar is a freelancer and teaches in several universities the basics of programming and computers. She holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from the American University of Beirut.

Before Codi, Samar was active in both the technical and academic fields. She held positions in several companies as a project manager, IT manager, and a Web Developer.  She now feels that the best way to convey her knowledge and experience is through teaching.

Laura is the Head of Communications at Codi, responsible for making sure everyone in Lebanon knows about Codi. She manages all the Marketing, Social Media, external communications and recruitment of new Codi students. Laura is particularly focussed on gender equality in the tech sector and is on a mission to get more women into programming around the world.

Before Codi, Laura was working as an Operations Specialist in London at Mediacom, one of the largest Media agencies in the world.

Rex is the English teacher at Codi. As well as teaching English, his responsibilities include designing the English curriculum and giving workshops on skills to prepare Codi graduates for the English-speaking workplace and professional world.

Rex is very happy to be part of the Codi team and to have a chance to teach English to those for whom it will make the biggest difference.

Outside Codi, Rex is a private tutor for English. Before working at Codi, he worked as a Latin teacher at secondary schools in the UK. He holds a BA in Classics from the University of Oxford as well as the CELTA qualification in teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Khaldoun graduated from the American University of Beirut in 2018 with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science. He is really passionate about Software Engineering and particularly Web Development and Machine Learning with a recent growing interest in Devops and Cloud Engineering.

Khaldoun leads the Computer Literacy course as well as assisting Samar with the Core.