Ada Developers Academy, the Seattle-based, tuition-free coding school for women, today named Cynthia Tee as its new executive director.
Tee spent the past 20 years at Microsoft as a program manager on various teams like Windows App Store, Windows 7 Shell User Experience, and Windows 7 Vista Client. Tee has a Masters in Computer Science from MIT.
“I have always had a passion for championing women in the technology industry,” Tee said in a statement. “Ada Developer’s Academy has established a solid track record for launching women into successful technical careers. I am extremely excited to be a part of it.”
Founded in 2013, Ada offers a year-long software development program that includes six months of intense classroom instruction followed by six months at an internship. Tuition is free thanks to corporate sponsors like Expedia and Zillow that help shape the program’s curriculum, provide mentorship, and offer internships to the students that provide a bridge between the classroom and the real world.
Ada graduated its first cohort of 15 students this past October — all of whom received job offers with an average salary of $75,000 — and its second group of 24 students are currently at their respective internships. We featured the program this past January.
Ada, which spun out of Tech Alliance in February, also recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to create a loan fund that will help support students’ daily living expenses while they are enrolled at the school. The third cohort begins class next month.
