“All right, we’re going to try out an exercise to get to know each other. Count up the number of languages you know — programming languages as well as spoken languages — and if you know only one, come to the front of the room. The more you know, the further you should move to the back of the room. Let’s find out who knows the most!”

It’s a Thursday evening in April, and more than 100 people have gathered at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center to celebrate women in technology. After a few seconds of mild commotion, the woman with the microphone winds her way to the back of the room, beelining for a dark-haired young woman standing near the back wall. The young woman, a Vanderbilt undergraduate named Morgan Oh, softly speaks into the microphone that she knows C, C++ and Java — in addition to English, Spanish and Korean.