One of my responsibilities on Transamerica's innovation team was building programs that supported the company's Responsible Business Strategy.

In an innovation lab session, I proposed a simple idea: a pilot coding camp for kids that teaches financial literacy through hands-on building. The goal was to support the community, strengthen employee pride, and create a program families would genuinely value.

I helped coordinate a three-day pilot with four innovation team members and about 10 children of employees. The program balanced structure with fun so kids could learn quickly and stay engaged.

My focus in the camp was teaching block coding using MIT's Scratch programming language and UBTECH's BuzzBot and MuttBot kits, which use an app-based block coding interface so students could program their robots' movements and behaviors.

The pilot was successful enough that it set the foundation for a full-week program in 2018.