Alumna Ruthe Farmer named finalist in the Anthem Awards

St Cross alumna Ruthe Farmer (MBA, 2007) has been named a finalist in the Anthem Awards, in the ‘Leader of the Year Responsible Technology’ category for her work in launching the Last Mile Education Fund – an organisation investing in the next generation of technology talent. The Fund itself is a finalist in the ‘Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – Innovation' category for its approach to ‘Incubating a new generation of technology talent’.

The Anthem Awards honours the purpose and mission-driven work of people, companies, and organisations worldwide. The winners of the inaugural Anthem Awards will be announced on Tuesday 15 February and celebrated at the first annual Anthem Voices virtual conference as well as at a star-studded virtual Awards Show on Monday 28 February 2022. 

Co-founded by Ruthe, Last Mile Education Fund focuses on boosting workplace diversity by ensuring low-income women pursuing computing degrees can graduate and get into successful careers by helping them to meet their basic needs throughout their studies. The Fund identifies women in financially precarious positions and helps them with unexpected costs - things that would threaten their education and career progress otherwise. Later, the graduates are given the chance to become Fund ambassadors and then investors in the next cohort of students once established in their career. 

Before co-founding the Last Mile Education Fund, Ruthe served as a senior policy advisor on tech inclusion for the Obama Administration, and as Chief Evangelist at CSforALL. Prior to this, she scaled up Aspirations in Computing whilst serving as Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at the National Centre for Women and IT. 

Of the news, Ruthe said:

As a new and growing organisation, we are honoured to be recognised as a finalist in not one, but two categories. Last Mile is a totally unique approach to incubating technology talent, and we are thrilled that our work resonated with the judges.