About us

The Ada Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation of women in open technology and culture, which includes open source software, Wikipedia and other open data, and open social media. Co-founders Mary Gardiner and Valerie Aurora each have ten years of experience in open source software, open culture communities, and women in computing activism. For more on our mission and strategy, see what we do.

The Ada Initiative supports the work of women in open source, open data, and other open technology and culture organizations. The Ada Initiative is not a replacement, competitor, or umbrella organization for these groups, and does not represent the women in open technology movement as a whole. We deeply value the work these groups are doing and will continue to collaborate and partner with them.

The Ada Initiative is named for Countess Ada Lovelace, widely acknowledged as the world’s first computer programmer. She is also the world’s first woman open source programmer.

Founders

Valerie Aurora, Executive Director

Valerie Aurora (formerly Val Henson) has over ten years of experience as both a Linux kernel developer and as a women in open source advocate. She worked as an operating systems developer for several leading open source companies, including Red Hat, IBM, and Sun Microsystems.  She designed, wrote code, and conducted research in the fields of file systems and networking. During the same period, she contributed over 5000 hours of volunteer time as a leading women in open source advocate.

Valerie has spoken at dozens of open source and computing conferences and events, including OSCON, Linux Plumbers Conference, linux.conf.au, and various USENIX conferences.  She was on the program or organizing committee for USENIX File Systems and Storage Technology, Linux Plumbers Conference, Ottawa Linux Symposium, FREENIX, USENIX ATC, and the Linux Filesystems and Storage Summit, among others.

Valerie’s writing includes HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux, an open source conference anti-harassment policy, HOWTO Negotiate Your Salary and Benefits – For Women, and the Kernel Hacker’s Bookshelf series for Linux Weekly News, and several publications for leading academic computer science conferences.

Valerie founded the Linux Storage and Filesystems Summit, started VAA Consulting, an independent Linux consulting company, and created and funded the Valerie Aurora Women in Computing Book Scholarship. She was a lead volunteer for LinuxChix from 2001–2007, during which time she founded and administered a women-only mailing list, held meetings at major conferences, raised funds for operating expenses, and worked with other members to improve LinuxChix’s public image.

Valerie holds a double B.S. in computer science and mathematics.

Mary Gardiner, Director of Operations and Research

Mary Gardiner is an open source developer, computer science graduate student, and women in open source advocate with over ten years of experience. Mary’s research is in lexical semantics and concentrates on how changes in word choice can affect meaning and tone. Before entering graduate school, she worked as a senior software engineer for a year and contributed code to the Python-based Twisted project.

Mary founded the first and largest women in open source organization in Australia, AussieChix, subsequently expanded it into Oceania as OWOOT, and also founded the first women in Linux mini-conference. She has served as a council member for Linux Australia, the largest non-profit funder of open source projects in Australia and as program chair for linux.conf.au, the largest Linux conference in the southern hemisphere. She has been an invited speaker at several open source conferences in Australia including a keynote speaker at PyCon AU 2011.

Over the last 10 years, Mary has written several hundred thousand words in support of women in open source while serving in leadership positions in several women in open source organizations. She is a lead blogger for the popular Geek Feminism blog and created two regular features, “Ask a Geek Feminist” and “Wednesday Geek Woman.” Her writing credits include several multi-week online courses on DNS, source control, career strategy and other topics, and a significant portion of the web content and documentation for the Geek Feminism, LinuxChix, OWOOT, and other projects’ web sites. She evaluated, installed, and supported for several years a variety of online collaboration tools for these groups, including web servers, web content management systems, IRC servers, mailing list managers, and blogging software.

Mary holds a B.S. in computer science and mathematics, a B.A. in linguistics, philosophy and semiotics, and will submit a PhD thesis in computational linguistics in 2012.

Mary and Valerie have collaborated with each other for a decade on a variety of women in open source advocacy projects.

Advisory board

The Ada Initiative is advised by a wide variety of women and men in open technology and culture.