Launched in 2017, the Ada Platform showcases women driving the future of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, to inspire the next generation of trailblazers.

Maryanna Quigless is a tech industry leader, currently Director of Product Management at Meta Inc., and Co-founder of the Black Product Managers Network. She's also an angel investor, the co-owner of NC Courage, and a previous startup founder and CEO.

This interview was conducted when Maryanna was Product Management Lead at Meta, then Facebook.

Dr Marily Nika is an award-winning leader and figure in AI tech. Marily is currently AI Product Lead at Meta within the Metaverse, a writer at marily.substack.com, an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, and a renowned speaker and educator.

This interview was conducted when Marily was in AI/ML at Google.

Community Engagements

In January 2017, our founder, Georgina, stood before Sheryl Sandberg, then-COO of Facebook, now Meta with a crucial question -- "How can we encourage more girls and women into STEM?" Sandberg's response was profound in its simplicity and became mantra for our mission today -- "you can't be what you can't see."

Georgina first recognised the imbalance in STEM while studying Physics, but remained undeterred, revelling in STEM's ability to decipher the universe. Like an artist painting the world with elegant brushstrokes of theories and mathematical equations, STEM explains how the sun warms our face on a summer's day, the "mirage effect" of heat waves rising from a barbecue, and how AI products like ChatGPT are transforming the way we access information.

Compelled to spread the word to more people like her, Georgina founded the Ada Platform in 2017. Innovation thrives on diverse perspectives, signalling the significant untapped opportunity for us all in boosting the number of women in STEM. Representation remains at 35% despite recent growth, with greatest disparities in Engineering, Physics, and Computer Science [1]. In 2023, McKinsey found that doubling women in STEM workforces could rocket Europe's GDP by €600 billion [2].

The Ada Platform, named after the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace, showcases trailblazing women continuing her legacy two centuries later -- from Bioinformatics to Quantum Computing and AI. Women are more likely to pursue a STEM career if they have access to role models like them [3], echoed in academia, where women professors are transformative for retaining women in STEM [4].

We strive to create and validate dreams of careers in STEM, and show existing women in STEM that we're so much more united than we know.

Get involved

Ada's Grand Tour: We will soon be taking the Ada Platform on tour around Europe. For this, we are looking for the following support:

1. Intros to interviewees (always!)
   
2. AV hardware & software consultation
3. Video editing
4. Social media mangement
5. Trademarking consultation

If you know anybody who would love to help, get in touch at hello@adaplatform.com