Ada Initiative

The Ada Initiative was a non-profit organization that sought to increase women's participation in the free culture movement, open-source technology and open culture. The organization was founded in 2011 by Linux kernel developer and open source advocate Valerie Aurora and open source developer and advocate Mary Gardiner (the founder of AussieChix, the largest organization for women in open source in Australia^[1]). It was named after Ada Lovelace, who is often celebrated as the world's first computer programmer, as is the Ada programming language.^[2] In August 2015, the Ada Initiative board announced that the organization would shut down in October 2015. According to the announcement, the Initiative's executive leadership decided to step down, and the organization was unable to find acceptable replacement leaders.^[3]