Superheros Who Code

One of our favorite clients is Pat Renzi. She’s a quiet juggernaut in insurance, a director at the consulting firm Milliman. We were interviewing her for a story when she mentioned this program in Seattle, the Ada Developers Academy, designed to help mid-career professionals get into coding.

We were intrigued.

We did a little digging. The story kept getting better. So we headed north, cameras in hand.
The Ada Academy, we learned, is working to turn the tide for underrepresented groups, like women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community, in tech.

We spent the day on site with the students and staff. And that was terrific. But we really wanted to tell the story through the eyes of the individual.

That’s when we met Aurora: one of two Ada students now interning at Milliman. Until recently, Aurora had been working odd jobs. Before that, she was a project manager at a tech firm, but became disillusioned by the obstacles that stood between her and the coding job of her dreams. If timing is critical, then Ada Academy presented itself at just the right moment.

Once the story began to unfold, we were so engrossed that we decided to film her again in Portland, at our expense.

We were inspired and hope you are, too.

— Tom