Sophia Viklund

Founder, backCODE

210 - How Serious Games Are Changing the World

Sophia Viklund first got the programming bug with C++ as a teenager in college. Working in software and web development since 1998, she became an entrepreneur. backCODE, a Unity development studio focusing on Serious Games (including those both for military applications and entertainment projects), is the fourth technology company Ms. Viklund has founded. In 2012 she was named in Forbes as one of a select group of "Female Founders to Watch," and again in 2013 as part of a group of "Women in Gaming to Watch." With strong commitments to both technology business initiatives and bringing women into technology, Ms. Viklund is an active mentor for STEM (White House Equal App challenge and UC Irvine Computer Science Department), and her mission is to bring more women into technology/STEM education and business entrepreneurship.

Ms. Viklund holds a Master's degree in linguistics with concentration in speech recognition, multiple technical certifications, and has a special interest in teaching programming languages. She also completed a second Master's program at UCLA. She is a co-organizer of Girl Geek Dinners/Los Angeles chapter; on the board of Directors of 50/50 leadership; on the executive board of Caltech Enterprise forum; and is a co-founder of PyLadies, a non-profit that teaches women programming in Python.