By Valerie Horvath, Program Manager for Internships & Alumni Hi I’m Valerie and I am the new Program Manager for Internships and Alumni at Ada! I’m pretty much a Seattle Native! I know there are very few of us in Seattle now, but I’ve been here since I was 2 years old. I joined Ada because I want to be on the side of changing the face of tech. I respect what Ada is doing within the community and I…
Thursday, August 23rd was a landmark for Ada Developers Academy. Ada Developers Academy alumni made a commitment to fundraise and subsidize on-going applications process costs estimated at an annual cost of $30,000 over the next three years. Ada recently introduced a new application fee beginning with Cohort 11 in August, 2018. The Ada community launched an immediate and public response to this introduction as there was deep concern that this fee would create a barrier for the groups Ada aims…
By Lisa Flores, Senior Program Manager Hi all – My name is Lisa and I’m the Sr. Program Manager at Ada. I’ve lived in Seattle for the past 4 years working in marketing at Amazon and Starbucks before joining Ada last year. Before that, I lived on the East Coast for several years, mostly in New York City. I started out my career as an 8th-grade teacher in the South Bronx and then moved on to education nonprofits. I’m originally…
By Dan Roberts, Lead Instructor This cohort, Ada taught React as our front-end JavaScript framework for the first time. We’re now at the end of the first week and I would say it went well – the students seem to have a solid understanding of the basics of React. Perhaps more importantly, students enjoyed the content and are excited about learning more. If that’s not a successful rollout then I don’t know what is. As with any new product we…
We are excited to announce The Laurel Fund, Ada’s first scholarship opportunity! The goal of the Laurel Fund is to provide funds to cover the living expenses of two or more Ada students during the initial classroom instruction portion of the Ada program. After the initial 6-months instruction portion is complete, students participate in 5-month paid internships with Seattle-area software companies. But, during the initial, intensive instruction phase, it can be difficult to make ends meet. The Laurel Fund is…
by Dan Roberts, Lead Instructor This is the story of how I found and fixed a performance problem in a React webapp. I’ve debugged many slow programs but never in the context of the web, so this was a great opportunity to experiment with the tools and grow my skill set. My problem turned out to be particularly tricky to analyze, but with the help of Chrome’s performance tools, some manual profiling and a careful scientific approach I was able…
Hello! I’m Dee Del Rosario, a new instructor at Ada, and I’m very excited to be here! I’ve spent a lot of time in Chicago and most recently Atlanta. Prior to this, I had been working as a full-stack software developer and front-end web developer. I also spend time working on efforts around inclusivity in video games and games communities. If I’m not on my computer, you’ll likely see me shopping for novelty mugs or blogging about optimism saving the…
1. What were you doing before you became a Software Engineer?I’ve had lab jobs in an oceanography, genetics and organic geochemistry. I’ve also worked in a library and as a waitress. Most recently I worked for a number of years as a pharmaceutical research chemist. Right before Ada I was at Seattle-based Amgen. 2. Where are you currently working and what do you do? I am a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) at Uber on the Software Networking team. What an…
Hi All, I am Nicole Buchanan, the new Executive Director at Ada Developers Academy. In this capacity I will be accountable to Ada’s Advisory Board, and have overall strategic and operational responsibility for Ada’s staff, programs, expansion, and execution of its mission. Prior to becoming the Executive Director, I spent the last 25 years in the technology space in senior roles with organizations like Microsoft, AT&T, Motorola, and Ericsson and most recently spent time as a consultant. I have spent…
In its four years, Ada has grown from a tiny “one-room schoolhouse” of 15 students to a major tech workforce training program in Seattle that will have graduated 150 by the end of 2017 and will train an additional 96 students annually going forward. Our program is well-known in the Seattle tech scene, and it continues to benefit from the financial and volunteer support of the tech community. But we need your help again. Being tuition-free is not enough for…