Ada Lovelace Day was first launched by Suw Charman-Anderson in 2009 on PledgeBank. Nearly 2,000 people made a pledge to blog about a woman in technology whom they admired on 24 March 2009. The day was a great success with blog posts, newspaper columns and media coverage emerging to celebrate in honour of the woman who is widely regarded as the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace.
Ada Lovelace Day 2016
Today on 11th of October 2016, eight years on from the first celebration in March of 2009, STEM enthusiasts across the world are taking the time to write, tweet, share, discuss and host events to celebrate Ada Lovelace & the achievements the women in STEM.
Last year, Ada Lovelace Day 2015 was a very special one for Verify Recruitment, it was the first time we officially marked Ada Lovelace Day with an event. Together with our community we hosted an event in the TripAdvisor Dublin offices and it was our first official public celebration of The Ada Lovelace Initiative, which promotes technology careers to female pupils nationwide.
Rhona Togher, CEO & Co-Founder of Restored Hearing at Ada Lovelace Day Dublin 2015
Looking back at our celebrations of Ada Lovelace Day last year, we were really only at the beginning of our journey of connecting female technology role models & the story of Ada Lovelace to students across the country. Our ultimate (and ambitious!) goal during at that point was to reach 2000 students in total with a career talk from an Ada Lovelace Initiative role model.
With the support of the Ada Lovelace Initiative role models who enthusiastically signed up last year, A.L.I. went on to reach 3000 students last year, 1000 students over our goal!
The Role Models of The Ada Lovelace Initiative
Today, on the 11th of October 2016, we are celebrating Ada Lovelace Day again at Verify Recruitment, however this time with an exciting year of progress for The Ada Lovelace Initiative behind us!
We are celebrating all the women in STEM in Ireland who have made it possible for The Ada Lovelace Initiative to reach 3000 students nationwide last year, and also the role models who are signed up and prepared to visit more students to promote STEM careers this year.
Meet The Role Models
Our first visit of The Ada Lovelace Initiative last year took place when Amanda Hay, Software Engineer with TripAdvisor in Dublin, Ireland visited the pupils of Mount Carmel Secondary School in Dublin City Centre.
The Ada Lovelace visits continued throughout last year and and along the way, our role models shared their experiences of promoting technology careers to female students nationwide.
The success of the Ada Lovelace Initiative depends on the participation of the technology professionals supporting our mission across Ireland & if you would like to hear the stories of the women who make our school visits possible, there are 16 stories available from our Ada Lovelace Initiative speakers on Meet The Role Models.
In this series, you will hear from 16 different women working in STEM in Ireland. The Ada Lovelace Initiative role models work in a variety of roles within the technology industry, all hailing from different backgrounds to each other – offering many different career insights to the students taking part in The Ada Lovelace school visits.
MTRM #15 featured Tanya Beattie – Solutions Architect with MDS Global.
MTRM #14 featured Jolene Dunne – a Software Engineer at Proofpoint in Belfast
Over the coming months, The Ada Lovelace Initiative will continue to visit more students across Ireland and we will continue to feature the stories of the A.L.I. role models here on Meet The Role Models.
#TechTeamTour
Last month, The Ada Lovelace Initiative launched its second year of school visits when the students returned from their summer holidays. However, during the school summer break before the students returned, we worked on a campaign with the Science Foundation of Ireland’s Smart Futures programme in order to promote STEM careers nationwide and to try to increase the visibility of female technology professionals even further this coming school year.
The objective of the #TechTeamTour series is to try to reach the male or female students who may not have considered a STEM career for themselves yet and also the female students who might be avoiding STEM careers due to the perception of STEM careers being more suited to male students and other inaccurate STEM stereotypes.
If you would like to share content from Meet The Role Models or the #TechTeamTour today, or if you would like to discuss Ada Lovelace Day celebrations with more women in STEM, please do so using the #AdaLovelaceDay hashtag on Twitter! 🙂
Ada Lovelace Day 2016
If you are passionate about increasing the visibility of female STEM professionals in our industry and also the future of STEM, we ask you today to join in the Ada Lovelace Day celebrations with us here at Verify Recruitment & the Ada Lovelace Initiative.
The Ada Lovelace Initiative is continuing to connect more women in STEM with secondary school students in Irish schools for the 2016/17 school year & we have an even more ambitious goal this year. We aim to reach 5000 students with a role model by the end of the 2016/17 school year! If you would like to share the message of the Ada Lovelace Initiative to your network today, please let the women in technology you know that we are looking for role models across Ireland to help with one visit each this year. There is more information available on www.verifyrecruitment.com/ali
Stay tuned for more technology community news from Verify on LinkedIn or @VerifyCommunity on Twitter – #alimystory
