A Look Back
Since the beginning of 2021, Ada has officially spun out and is building on the momentum of becoming an independent organization. Here is a state of the union covering the past 18 months and the next strategic direction of the organization.
In March 2020, the education team flipped the entire program from an in-person learning model to fully digital. This team has continually adapted and adjusted to student feedback and has not lost a single student, even doubling the number of students served in each cohort. This team is remarkable and deeply rooted in the students’ experience. They are leading the field of education in developing an effective digital learning environment.
Between July 2020 and January 2021, we built an operational team and infrastructure for the organization – Finance, HR, Payroll, Benefits, IT, Office Management, etc. Throughout this process, we also doubled our staff numbers and our physical space in Seattle – literally and figuratively creating space to serve many, many more Adies.
Several new functions and programs were created to expand our ability to serve more students in more ways. Our new functions/teams include Communications, Development, Corporate Accountability, Career Services, Student Success, Finance & Operations. New programs at Ada include:
- Ada Build: a preparatory program for BIPOC and trans applicants to support them in preparing for Ada.
- Lovelace Learning Labs: an advancement program to support continuing education and career development for our alum community.
- Accelerate: a condensed version of Ada for people who have attended bootcamps in the past but haven’t landed a full-time software development position.
Ada is still building and evolving our systems, policies, and practices as an independently operating organization. We aim to do things differently – to create an organization where our values are present throughout everything we do.
We have built so many incredible things over the past 18 months that are having and will have a profound impact on the future of women and gender-expansive people in tech.
We envision a world in which Black and brown women & gender expansive people achieve economic power through careers in tech.
What’s Next For Ada?
In October 2020, we set out to build a strategic plan for the next three years. As we advanced in the Equality Can’t Wait challenge, we decided to focus on the five-year plan required in our ECW prospectus.
As of July 29th, 2021, we are official recipients of the $10 million grant from the Equality Can’t Wait challenge. These funds allow us to grow exponentially in markets across the country by 2025. We will continue expanding the Adie community and pushing ourselves to ensure all Adies have the robust careers they came here to create.
We at Ada are excited to be at the forefront of rebuilding our economy. Only the economy we are building will be inclusive and resilient because we know that when women and gender-expansive people hold economic power, we all benefit.