[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to Revolve where we explore big questions from all angles.
Each season we use one big question to dive into a topic with experts showing how perspective matters in building thoughtful solutions.
I'm Tripp Williams.
Season one, what makes an economy strong and vibrant?
Using Seattle as a case study, this season we talk with different people involved in economic development to learn how economies are built.
Today we welcome Alexandra Holeen, Director of strategic partnerships and development at ADA Developers Academy.
ADA Developers Academy is a non profit working to increase access to high paying tech jobs for people from underrepresented communities.
ADA focuses on intense technical skill development and and year long software coding boot camps and then works to place graduates with partner companies.
In this episode we discuss ada's mission and impact, how to promote equitable and inclusive growth and the value of humility.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: We're here with Alexandra Holeen from ADA Developers Academy and excited to have Alexandra on today to talk about her work with ADA and her perspective on economic development. Welcome, Alexandra.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: Hi. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Yeah, wonderful, wonderful. So we have a lot to cover. I want to start with just some basic definitions. So economic development as a concept means a lot of things to a lot of different people. What does economic development mean to you and the communities you've worked with?
[00:01:37] Speaker C: Overall, we just think that it means giving folks a seat at the table and just that chance to have just some agency and real power over what access they have for themselves, for their families.
A chance to be a part of this crazy economy that we live in right now, a chance to make a difference in that economy and also to have just that power over what they want to do in that economy and not just be that sort of, not statistic, but that sort of cog in this like crazy capitalism wheel that's always turning.
We try to center all of that around that economic development and economic access. We center it around equity. And we really like to have just on every lens, we have just that compassion and historical context for what we're doing, what the work we're doing and why we're doing that work.
This, all this, you know, the way people are in the system didn't just happen, it happened because of certain things. And we like to just make sure we're couching it in that, in that historical context and compassion.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: That's really helpful as a starting place and I'm excited. We're going to step in a moment into a little bit more specifically about the work ADA does.
But before we get there, I'd be curious again from the conceptual standpoint, when you've seen projects at ADA and other places that have been particularly successful.
What are those economic development efforts? What do they have that makes them successful? Or on the other side, what makes them not work well? What have you seen in your experience?
[00:03:24] Speaker C: I think that, I mean what makes them work well is I've seen people, I mean to go slow and bring people along. I think that sometimes in just the systems that we live in and the systems that are built fast, rapid growth is what is what success looks like. So to do something not only like, you know, well in a lot of people's, in a lot of people's definition of success, but it's also to do them fast. So I think that if people can to do it well, you have to, I think go have and bring people along. I think you have to do a lot of initial people to do a lot of their own initial learning.
Bringing in historical, again I'm going to say historical context in this a hundred times, but bringing in the historical context of what was there before, why it was there, who put it there, why and why it is the way it is.
But just having a lot of that compassion for what is there and why it is there. The grace to know that these are systems, these are big things that are working against folks, people, all of the it's working against people. And just like that historical concept and the willingness to be humbled by how big the system is, I think that is when people are able to do some really good, meaningful work and also when people are able to bring people in the community to help do that meaningful work. That's what you have to do.
Do that with, alongside of make sure that the people you are trying to impact, those are the people that are in that room and sitting at the table with you.
And that's when you're able to find that the system that it seems like terrifyingly monolithic and huge. That's when you start to see that there's cracks in it and it does like it has its weaknesses and then that's when you can really exploit those cracks. I think when you see it done like the opposite, when it's not successful, I think it's just that lack of awareness and intentionality.
And I think when you see people not wanting to dig into the nitty gritty of the why is when you see people really fail because they're trying to fix a surface problem that is deeper than anything, that deeper and you can try to chip at something very small and you're not going to be able to make A big difference because you're not addressing the historical context and the historical places that people are coming from. And I think that's when you can really mess up, when you're trying to serve disenfranchised and marginalized groups.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: That's a really powerful and important point.
Economic development traditionally is measured by things like GDP or per capita income. Right. And as I'm hearing you describe, the totality of the challenge of building a vibrant economy isn't just tracking those measures. It's including the things beyond just pure economy or pure business development. Right. If I'm understanding you correctly, it includes things that are way beyond that topic at its first glance.
[00:06:39] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think all of that can be. You can definitely get down to some really good data numbers. But at the beginning, if there is not someone asking the questions of the why, I think that the number at the end will always be the failure.
They just won't be what people want, the impact that people want.
ADA was about giving access, giving people that seat at the table, and changing the face of tech.
Our secondary mission was this generational change of like, whoa, these folks are not only going to affect themselves and change tech and the way tech is written and who is writing the code, but they are going to, like, they're gonna buy a home. Something that, you know, maybe they're, you know, maybe our grandparents did, but our parents didn't do or, you know, or we weren't able to do before. And that is something that wasn't, you know, that's a different history that we're writing.
I mean, there's that history right now that's happening of like, you know, our parents can buy homes, but we can't buy homes. You know, we're giving that really big. Buying a home is the biggest tax cut you can possibly have on your taxes.
And that is not afforded to people that are the most in need of a tax cut.
It is not even access. It's not even something they can access.
So that part of buying that home, like, you're changing, you're addressing a systemic rooted issue.
Why weren't these people able to buy homes? Because they didn't have access to that capital and that growth, that big chance when you get to, like, buy your home and really seat some growth and some real capital behind who you are and what you want for your family and generations to come after you.
So that's the. But if you don't look at the beginning and you don't look at how, why we are in these situations, you will Miss so much of it and you'll miss so many of the, I call them the cracks and the fissures and the problems in the system.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: So now I'm excited. That's a helpful segue into the next question I wanted to ask, which is really about the work you and ADA are doing and telling our audience a little bit more about what ADA is and what ADA is doing. I think it's particularly interesting, the concept again of economic development. There's so many different entry points. Right. To try to build a vibrant economy. I think you and ADA have chosen a really unique and interesting one.
Please just share with us, if you would, ada's story and who ADA helps or who ada's target audience is and what exactly you and your group do.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: Yeah. So ADA Developers Academy is a mission driven nonprofit based in Seattle. We were founded about six years ago by Scott Case and Elise Worthy. Scott was a white dude, really into clean energy. That's his passion work, was a CTO starter of a tech company. Elise was his neighbor who also who went to a coding boot camp somewhere in D.C. and Scott, Scott's a software developer and just a software engineer at heart. But he had a problem. He could not hire any female women software developers.
If he finally found a resume, he said he would get them in the door and then he wasn't able to grab them because Amazon would come in and swoop and just like, you know, give them this crazy salary. So he wanted a diverse staff. He knew what happens when he has a diverse staff, especially when it comes to writing the code for a product that he wanted to, you know, touch everyone, not just, you know, the people that was writing the code. He wanted to make sure his product was seen by all races, all colors, all people.
He decided to, he decided to start ada and he worked with Elise.
Elise had come from that background of she had gone through a coding boot camp and saw where her weaknesses were. And so Scott worked with other execs of tech companies he worked with year up. Year up is another program like Ada's. Actually we're just like them because that's. We worked with in the beginning to sort of figure out the model of like, how do we make, how do we create more women software engineers? At the time it was women software engineers.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: And that's Europe, as in one year, right?
[00:11:17] Speaker C: Year up, yeah, year, yeah, it sounds like Europe, but it's. That's why I'm saying yeah. So they're another great organization that are, you know, they're all about economic growth. And economic pathways as well for people of low socioeconomic status. And they think it's an opportunity gap, which I think that we speak to the same opportunity gap as well.
But he started ada, they wanted to make it sound. They wanted to make the program rock solid, and they wanted the students that came through. He knew that the students that came through were already gonna have to deal with enough, like, adversities, being a woman, being a person of color, being anything outside of that sort of status quo norm that is a software developer, they're going to deal with some crap. So he wanted to make their tech foundation solid. So the program's long. It's an, it's a year long program. You're in class for five and a half, six months. You're in an internship with one of our sponsoring companies for another six months and then you graduate our students. It's free for our students to come to our program. We offer them a low interest loan that ADA raises money for.
They have to go through this pretty crazy application process to get in. We get about 300 applicants every cohort. 304 applicants every cohort for those 48 spots. We do two cohorts of 48 every year.
And so we educate about 100 folks a year. And then the companies pay for their education.
So we have our partners are, you know, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Zillow, Redfin, Blue Origin. They pay for the education of our students. So that's how it keeps days free. And then they take an intern and they basically complete the education of one of our interns and we pay them a stipend while they're in internship.
ADA has evolved and grown. Our mission has grown with our students and who we serve, which makes us.
One of my most proud moments of ADA is just like expansion of that mission.
We now say that we're for women and gender diverse people, with our target being underrepresented minorities. That's black, African American, native Native, Pacific Islander and Latinx. And we target people of the LGBTQIA community and people with low socioeconomic status. So that's what we. Intersectional diversity is what we want to make that impact. Where we want to see an impact, we don't.
We, you know, the, like, the history of feminism is sort of the history of ada. It's like that, oh, it's for women. Wait, that does not work when you're a black woman. Because you can't just walk in, you know, vagina first, like you're a black woman or whatever. First, like you can't just walk in whatever you have to. You walk in with a lot of intersections that happen of your identity. And so being my favorite thing that we did at ADA and we've done over those six years is we've grown and adapted to the people that we serve and the people that we want to serve, and we've been more inclusive in the industry that we want to see. It's not just about gender. It is about gender. It is about race. It is about your LGBTQA status, It is about your socioeconomic status. Those are the things that are important, just as important as the gender piece.
And that's sort of our. That's our. That's our crack that we are trying to constantly make bigger. We believe if you bring in people that are already from resilient, marginalized, beautiful communities, when they get the salary of a software engineer, they will do amazing things with it. And when they are writing the code of the things that people use every day, they will write the most inclusive code and the inclusive. Like, they will build these inclusive, beautiful products that are a reflection, an actual reflection of what we are and who we are. So that's our beating heart sort of mission out there.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's. I've been impressed since I've heard of it, and.
And I think it's a wonderful, wonderful program.
If I could just walk through to the end, then.
So the students who enter, and I heard you mention a credit facility, they're offered a 0% loan for what does that cover for them or what does that do?
[00:15:42] Speaker C: That's not. Our partner right now is Craft 3 with the loan. They offer like a 3.54% loan. Gotcha. Yeah. So we have a partner right now that we're working with, and that is. That's their living expenses. I mean.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Okay, okay. Because they're not working.
[00:15:57] Speaker C: They can't work. It's nine to five. And I mean, free was not enough. And that loan has been around since the beginning. So it was Scott and Elise, like, they. They understood the nuances of what they were doing. They understood, like, okay, like, if we're gonna make this free, like, who do we. Like, who can do a free program and not work for six months? Like, that's a. That's a demographic right there, you know, so they wanted to make. Be inclusive. And so that part of that access, part of, like, coming to ada, we don'. Want that to be a barrier. If you love code and you love writing code, and it is something that fills you up and you actually enjoy it, which there are those people I do not.
Then we want you at ada. We want you to be a part of what we're doing and we want you to come.
And the residual effects of picking those students of that target students that we have is that they are insanely, insanely generous and they give back all the time.
[00:16:54] Speaker B: Wonderful. And so what have the results been? What's ADA seen with its graduates?
[00:17:01] Speaker C: Yeah, we've had some pretty crazy results. We've graduated over 300.
I think it's like 80 people at this point. And we have about a 95% placement rate in the industry.
Our students are working as software developers. Some of them have been out of the industry for six years. And there's this point, they're CTOs of smaller tech shops, they're lead engineers, they're managers, they're getting promoted.
A thing that hiring managers will say about ADA students is they come in with this just like that, to brain that they needed that person that can write code and then also talk about the code they're writing to someone else to say, talk to that product person and fix that issue.
They're amazing, amazing coders. They're really good communicators. They're problem solvers, they're project managers. They're things that I don't like using gendered roles. But they know how to communicate with each other. They know how to, to get unstuck to solve a problem.
Yeah, the imposter syndrome and the white supremacy in the workplace are real. But at ada, we also have a pretty rigorous social justice curriculum that tries to help them navigate the industry as it is right now and tries to help them navigate how to change the industry.
Twenty something years ago, there were more women and diverse people in software engineering. They left. And it wasn't cause like the math was hard, it was because they were like, just tired of like, yes. They just were like, why am I in this? I could go do something else and not have to deal with this patriarchal, just like misogynistic, like, ridiculous place. And so they, and so they did. And so our goal is like retention. Our next big goal that we're talking about at ADA is retention.
We do not want a leaky bucket. We want people to stay in this industry. We want them to know how to advocate for themselves, how to be allies for other people on their team, how to get that next promotion if they want to be that boss, and how to get there.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: So one of the compelling parts of ADA as I see it, is not only increased population of groups that have traditionally not been represented well in the tech industry from an access standpoint and some from a personal benefit standpoint and familial benefit standpoint, but also for the incredible value that actually brings to a lot of the structures that are being built today. Right. And another guest on this season, Max Scott will offer his perspective on sort of policy at a higher governmental level and how policies are being promoted and propounded to shape the digital future. Right. And so I'd love to hear your perspective on, you know, again, alongside ada's focus on helping open doors or increase traffic flow for certain populations, what are the benefits you see in the dataseas to having a more diverse tech population, work population? What is that going to do for us all as consumers and for the society at large?
[00:20:21] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean in the tech industry, like specifically in the tech industry, there's been so many articles about what happens when you bring a diverse team together. Like when it comes to, you know, productivity and when it comes to solving a problem. Like those are the initial just immediate sort of results that we start to see from our tech companies or I mean I love when we had a tech company come in and it was a bunch of like, you know, really great, well meaning white dudes all older, they'd all sort of spun out of another really big tech company and started their own thing and they were running up against the same problem over and over again. And I was like well hello, you're like all coming at this the same way because you have the exact same background. What you need is you need just a diversity of thought in here, a diversity. And I always use that term carefully because people take it to different realms that I don't. But you just need diversity in here, diversity of levels. Having a junior person asking that question that is that no one else has asked because everyone figured oh yeah, everyone knows that answer. Having a junior person ask that question why we do it that way will open up a whole new conversation of what that product is going to look like.
Just being able to think about things from a different angle I think is just so important when it comes to that whole.
When it comes to economics and industry. I mean our students have a 148% salary change when they leave ADA.
The average rate coming in is about $40,000. The average rate going out, I mean for our last cohort was $116,000.
They are, and they take care of their communities and families so much.
That sort of economic, I mean We've built $26 million of salaries from ADA. That's going back into the Seattle economy. These are folks that came from industries. They were waitresses, they were hairdressers, Some of them were working in the sciences, and some of them were working as flight attendants. But that sort of wealth and that $26 million over five years, it's a drop in the bucket. I know, but that pushing that and making that a part of making that a part of the Seattle economy is huge. Yeah, we can just. I mean, we're trying to. The central district In Seattle, it's 2030 Union. It is a historically black neighborhood. We want to break into that and give them, the folks that are the folks that. The grandchildren of the people that bought their homes in that area, software developers, salary, if they love software development, so they can go and buy that home. That is, you know, that they want to in a neighborhood that they grew up in.
That is, that's the economic, like, that's the economic resilience that we see our students bringing to this economy and bringing the Seattle economy every day.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:23:43] Speaker C: And it's amazing. Like, that's, like, that's. And that generational change is huge. Like, we can't even measure it yet.
COVID 19 definitely, like, just has put like a huge microscope over all the flaws in our system.
And all I'm. And what I'm seeing from the ADA side is black, brown, lgbtq, formerly poor folks, giving back immediately to the ADA community, giving back to other setting up go fund mes for each other, for folks that don't have jobs, and figuring out how they can lift and climb at the same time. Because those communities were already doing it before we gave them that salary.
They know how to do it. They know what they're doing. They like, immediately that's up. They do.
And so it's just really amazing to see that on a. Right now we have it on this really small level. 300, 400 people.
I can't wait till we hit that thousand mark.
We can really, like, we're moving the needle here.
I mean, in our homes right now, but like in a really small office in Seattle. And it's awesome.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's.
It's a really special experiment that's proven to have a great record of success, even within six years. I'd be curious. You know, I think when people hear about a program like ADA that has achieved such success, one of the first questions they ask is, well, how can we do more of this?
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: So what are the ingredients that would need to be considered to either grow? Aida, is ADA trying to grow? What's your ideal state and size, et cetera.
And then also please do mention specifically how folks can learn more about how they can support you.
[00:25:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't.
I mean, we just got our new. We got a new CEO, Lauren Sato. She's awesome. She came from year up, which is actually where she sort of like cut her teeth on this, all this work, and then went to some nonprofit or some for profits and then went to the Riveter. So she understands growth like no other in Seattle right now. I don't know if we have an ideal size. I think that. Right. So our business model is based on how many folks go into internship.
I think we finally at ADA have the right people in leadership and the right butts in the seats to talk about folks investing in just our innovation and what we know we do really well. We know that we take people that want to be software engineers from marginalized communities and we educate them to be software engineers. We do that really well and we know how to do it. How can we do more of that? We're going to need folks to for sure invest in our innovation, invest in our ideas. We have six years worth of ideas that we would love to have people come and say, listen, tell me what you all are thinking about doing.
Here's the grant to run that program for a year. We had one investor come in last year, our first invest. Well, not our first, but our first sort of really big major donor come in and invest in a pre ADA program that is helping us bring like we say we bring people from like a 4 to a 10. Well, we need, in order to crack into that target that we want, we need to bring people from a zero to a four and you know, to that education level they need just to apply.
The pre ADA program is doing just that.
This person came to us and they said they wanted to see more black and brown people in Seattle go through ada. Okay. They gave us the money to do it, to hire the instructor, write the curriculum, get the lms, and we did it. And we're doing it right now and we're running. We got the grant in December. We ran the pilot in February and March and we are now watching the students go through the admissions process and we're hoping to have numbers soon.
It's cool being able to work for a nonprofit with software engineers.
It's like a mixture of for profit and it's like a mixture of big government and for profit business.
The heart and the intentionality mixed with the sort of fast moving and super efficient and effective Problem solving. That's what we try to bring at ADA to be.
To just push out the best product and make sure that we are contributing to what we think are the systemic issues in the society.
I would say go to our website@ada developersacademy.org and check out the video. The video at the beginning is awesome.
Contact us if you find to the donate page. You find my email, you find our contact email, Contact us and tell us that you are interested in helping and you're interested in being a part of this. We're growing in August. We're moving spaces. We're looking for folks to help us with that. We like to keep all of as much money as we can into programs, of course, because that keeps us being able to serve our students the way we want to serve them. And so we're trying not to spend any money on furniture. That's our goal.
Yeah, help us keep serving the students.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: And we'll put that link up in the notes that folks can navigate there as well.
So this has been a wonderful conversation, Alexander. I just would like to finish with going back a bit to theory. We started the beginning with the concept of what economic development is. We've covered how you and ADA are working to help promote a vibrant economy. Let's imagine if we were in an instance where there was an economy to be built and we think of the different stakeholders involved in building an economy, from policymakers on the public side to private enterprise, to folks doing some of the social enterprise or nonprofit work that you do.
Which of those hats would you put on? If you had the choice of choosing between any of those, which is the lever you'd like to have your hand on and what would be one of the first things that you would do to help build that economy in this blank space.
[00:30:04] Speaker C: I thought about this and I was like, thinking about this from my, like from my beautiful, you know, economy that I built in my head, that is not this one. And I was thinking about it from this one and I was like, let me live in the. Let me live in the now. And I was, I said the private sector because they have the money.
That's who's bringing. And I mean, again, we live in this capitalistic society. Money is the power. And what I would do first is give it to the black and brown organizers because they're doing it right. And so that's one of our. Another saying, Ada, if we're trying to build a new program or we're trying to do something, is there a black or brown or disenfranchised person already doing this work and how do we partner with them instead?
So I go find the people and try to give it. I give it to them.
I love being a part of the beating heart and the passion work, but I know that all of that is done with capital.
But I'd love to invest that with as many black and brown organizers as I ever could.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: So more private enterprise support for the sort of organizations that are doing the ADA being a great example of where some of that money could go.
Wonderful, Alexander, thank you so much. This has been a really rich conversation and I can't thank you enough for your time. I'll put up the notes like I mentioned, but again, encourage the audience to check out ADA Developers Academy and all the great work that you and team are doing. But thanks again for joining.
[00:31:41] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you for having me. This was awesome.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: Thanks for listening. Check the show notes for links and information mentioned in the episode, and explore the other episodes in this season to learn more on this topic. Look, I've listened to them all. I'm obviously a little bit biased, but I really do think each offers a valuable perspective you'll appreciate before we go subscribe to our show to get new episodes as soon as they come online.
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