Amanda Watts
Co-founder & Creative Director
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandawatts/?originalSubdomain=au
- https://girlgeekacademy.com/
- amanda@girlgeekacademy.com
Specialty Areas
Advocacy, Arts, Music, Literature, Education, Equity and Equality in STEMM, Science, Technology and Innovation
About Me
Amanda Watts is a branding expert, creative entrepreneur, and one of the five co-founders of Australia’s peak social organisation for women in tech – Girl Geek Academy, established in 2014 to increase the number of women working in STEM-based roles. Although in Amanda’s case – STEAM – as she brings the Art to the program.
Girl Geek Academy is behind Australia’s first all-women hackathon, #SheHacks, Australia’s first all-women makerfest, #SheMakes, the sell-out gamefest, #SheMakesGames, and the world’s first hackathon for girls aged five to eight, #MissMakesCode. Its mission is to teach 1 million women to get into tech and launch their own startups by 2025.
A digital design specialist who uses the keyboard as her paintbrush, Amanda is the artist behind the vibrant Girl Geek Academy branding and sits as its Design program lead.
A self-confessed pixel-pusher, Amanda’s palette covers all things design – including graphic design, which she studied at Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec), a trailblazing polytechnic in New Zealand’s Waikato region.
When she isn’t helping girl geeks, Amanda works in two creative businesses in Melbourne. She’s creative director of Design Junkies, where she marries multi-disciplinary work and technology to help companies execute quality brand and marketing material.
Practising what she preaches, Amanda co-founded startup venture BrandSpot in 2014 with a fellow founder she met during a Girl Geek Academy #SheHacks event, proving first-hand how the initiative is working to create more women-led startups in Australia.
