16-year-old Ellora James, one of our current S5 students, recently won a highly prestigious national technology award.

The FDM Every Woman in Technology Awards ceremony took place on 10th February in the London Hilton on Park Lane hotel and was attended by over 550 business and technology leaders from around the world. Ellora won the coveted ‘One To Watch’ award after impressing the judges with her self-taught abilities in HTML and CSS coding. Ellora now tutors younger students in the school through her involvement in the Apps For Good programme, where the school has excelled on a national stage in recent times.

Ellora spoke to us about her achievements and said: “I was actually really nervous for the awards, even though I knew I didn’t need to be! It was really great fun though.  I arrived early for the finalist briefing and was able to chat to some of the other finalists.  The event was a lot bigger than I had imagined. I was the second youngest there and everyone was impressed at how much I’d achieved!

I also met Amy, who was another finalist in my category.  The three of us in our group had all done such different things I had no idea whatsoever who was going to win.  But the fact we got to attend regardless meant I wasn’t too worried if I didn’t win because I still got a trip to London and got to meet everyone.

I was so shocked when I won, I was actually shaking. Not because I was nervous about speaking in front of everyone – I was just so happy!

I know how important it is to have role models and people who inspire you so for me to receive this award in recognition of not just my work with Envirocache but also for helping inspire others is so great and I hope this will help me continue to do so.

And it still hasn’t completely sunk in yet…”

Ellora hopes to study for Advanced Higher qualifications next year in Computing, Maths and English before following a Computing degree at University.

We are all very proud of Ellora’s acheievements and are sure that this is just the beginning of further success for her.