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29-year-old Lyndsey Scott is a woman with one well-heeled foot in fashion and the other in technology: a Calvin Klein and Victoria’s Secret model, she codes and develops iTunes apps by night, shattering all stereotypes. So far, she’s created and programmed two apps in her down-time from the runway, the first one, called Educate!, is a charity-based app that sponsors young Ugandan scholars, and second one, called iPort, offers a digital way for models to carry around their portfolios.
Born in New Jersey, Lyndsey is currently a New Yorker, who considered herself an ugly duckling in high school and was bullied by peers. “I didn’t technically start being bullied until my super awkward high school years, where I all of a sudden found myself at 5 feet 9 inches and 89 pounds,” says Lyndsey in interview to slate.com. “I was a late-bloomer. I didn’t really start looking like a model until after college, so it’s been a rather jarring experience having people see and treat me the way they suddenly do now.”
Lyndsey graduated from the prestigious liberal arts college Amherst with a double major in Theatre and Computer Science, but her technological interest started long before that, “I first started coding on my TI-89 graphing calculator when I was about 12, although I didn’t think of it as programming at the time” she says, “I looked through the book of documentation it came with and realized I could make games on my own.” And it was her love of theatre that led to a glittering catwalk career, “After graduating, I started acting and signed with a modeling agency – modeling is a lot like acting and I love transforming into different characters.”
She got her big break in early 2009 with Calvin Klein: she was the first ever African American to get an exclusive contract with the company for New York Fashion Week, and then was signed on for the DKNY campaign.
“Generally, I think that women, people of color, and anyone else who doesn’t fit the traditional mold of a computer programmer often has to prove themselves to be taken seriously” explains Scott in her feature on farfetch.com. But she’s never doubted that she has something to contribute to the programming community, “With coding at least, I’m super knowledgeable and I can prove myself fairly quickly.”
Lyndsey has become an advocate for coding, explaining that ‘This year, companies like Google and Apple have really taken to me because they want to encourage diversity in tech, and the media have realized there’s a growing interest in computer science.” She travels to schools to speak about pursuing careers in computer programming – Scott will be the keynote speaker at Harvard this fall.
In her time off modeling and coding, Lyndsey Scott’s style is rocked out, favoring Helmut Lang and Alexander Wang. “In general, I tend to be drawn to dark colors and more edgy styles, but I also like to lighten things up a bit with softer fabric choices,” says the model.
