Mariana Costa

Peruvian innovator bridging gender gap in Latin America's tech industry

As co-founder of Laboratoria, Mariana Costa has trained over 2,500 underprivileged women as full-stack developers across 6 Latin American countries. Her radical "income share agreement" model enables students from favelas and indigenous communities to pay tuition after securing tech jobs - 80% find employment within 6 months.

Costa's breakthrough came when she convinced Amazon Web Services to establish their first Spanish-language certification program specifically for Laboratoria graduates. This partnership created 300% more female cloud architects in the region within two years. The World Bank featured her model in their 2022 Digital Transformation Report as a blueprint for inclusive growth.

Her most disruptive achievement is the AI-powered mentorship platform that matches students with Silicon Valley engineers. This virtual apprenticeship program has reduced the gender pay gap by 35% for participants compared to traditional computer science graduates.