Innovative Fund Removes Barriers for Undergraduate Women in Tech
The Last Mile Education Fund announced today a disruptive new approach to improving diversity in the tech industry. While efforts to broaden participation in tech are making an impact, today just 11% of students in the lowest income quartile graduate within 6 years of starting college¹. This new model recognizes that, beyond tuition, it’s often the smaller hurdles along that last mile from classroom to career — like food insecurity, affording critical necessities like internet access, or transportation to an internship — that derail students’ dreams.
The Last Mile Education Fund invests in low-income underrepresented students in high-demand technology and engineering fields, helping them persist through the last mile to graduation by overcoming these otherwise trivial financial hurdles for which assistance is less available. The fund has secured $3 million to launch its inaugural effort focused on women in computing fields. The initial funding round drew investment from Pivotal Ventures, former Pinterest executive Françoise Brougher, ReBoot Representation, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, the Murphy Family Fund, the Cognizant Foundation, AnitaB.org, the Hopper-Dean Foundation, Capital One, Schmidt Futures, the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, and Snap Philanthropy.
Last Mile began operation in 2019, testing its unique model through pilot investments and planning grants. The fund pioneered a bold investment-based approach to provide agile, just-in-time financial support for low-income, underrepresented tech and engineering students within four semesters of graduation. Unlike traditional scholarships, where applicants receive assistance based on metrics like grades and prior awards, Last Mile focuses on applicants’ demonstrated persistence and resilience. Last Mile already has demonstrated both the demand for, and the impact of, this approach. It distributed over $300,000 to 350 low-income students in 2020, covering expenses like tuition, housing, car repairs, and other basic needs like internet and groceries in the form of COVID emergency grants. With the concept of abundance at the core of its mission, the Last Mile Education Fund reimagines striving low-income students as a high-impact opportunity that addresses diversity challenges plaguing the tech industry. And it offers partners an opportunity to invest in this historically under- resourced pool of high-potential talent that’s already in the pipeline.
Last Mile’s social funding model calls for $15 million in philanthropic capital, which is predicted to catalyze $25 million in investment by fund alumni, individuals and corporate donors, enabling investments in 38,000 high-potential underrepresented tech students by 2030.
In addition to financial support, Last Mile collaborates with tech inclusion organizations to ensure grantees have access to social support and peer networks. Partners to date include Anitab.org, the Coalition for the Advancement of Hispanic Serving Institutions (CAHSI), Girls Who Code, National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), STARS Computing Corps and Women in Cyber Security (WiCyS).
The Last Mile Education Fund was inspired by the personal journey of co-founder, Rian Walker. When facing a critical point in her academic journey, two key mentors, (tech inclusion advocate Ruthe Farmer and computer science faculty member Dr. Sarah Lee) invested personally and leveraged their professional networks to ensure she had the resources to access opportunities and successfully complete her academic journey. Rian’s successful career trajectory, and current position as a full-time technical analyst at a Fortune 500 company, inspired the three to co-found a new model designed to broaden access to resources for more low-income students like Rian around the country.
“Rian’s journey validated the need to reimagine how we define student potential,” shared co-founder Ruthe Farmer. “Traditional scholarship models seek to identify and reward ‘top talent’, expecting resource-constrained students to be high-achieving outliers to be worthy of support. Last Mile is aimed at incubating striving students like Rian to become the next generation of technology innovators. They’ve had to be creative and resourceful to get this far, and so should we.”
Join the Last Mile co-founders and special guests on Wednesday, January 13th at 12pm PST/3pm EST for the official Last Mile Education Fund Kick-Off! Register to attend here.
Press inquires: andrea.thomas@lastmile-ed.org