October 20, 2021
Baltimore, MD – Last Mile Founder and CEO Ruthe Farmer has been named a Schmidt Futures Innovation Fellow. Schmidt Futures is a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt that bets early on exceptional people making the world better.
“The mission of the Innovation Fellows program is to support extraordinary individuals and teams with potentially transformative ideas to leverage science, technology, and data to solve important societal challenges. The impact that Ruthe is driving with the Last Mile Education Fund meets these criteria, and we are excited to support such an outstanding leader’s work,” said Kumar Garg, Senior Managing Director, Schmidt Futures.
As a Schmidt Futures Innovation Fellow, Farmer joins a prestigious cohort of leaders working across multiple sectors. Fellows connect and support each other’s work, and their ideas receive both financial and in-kind support from Schmidt Futures to accelerate their ideas that help others at scale.
Farmer’s idea is to close the equity gap in tech and engineering by investing in ‘striving students’ - those who have demonstrated commitment to a technical career and are nearing the finish line, but in need of additional support to graduate. Currently just 14% of students in the bottom income quartile graduate within 8 years of starting college.
“These last-mile investments ensure that society realizes the gains on the billions of sunk costs invested in these students in the form of outreach and support programs, scholarships, financial aid, loans and more,” shared Farmer. “This population is the most readily available untapped source of talent we have, and currently the system is failing them.”
Farmer has focused on tech inclusion for two decades including work at CSforAll, the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), and Girl Scouts of the USA. In addition to this honor, Farmer has served as 2012 Chair of CSEDWeek, was named a 2013 White House Champion of Change for Technology Inclusion, received the 2014 Anita Borg Institute Award for Social Impact, and the inaugural UK Alumni Award for Social Impact in 2015.
Farmer exemplifies Schmidt Futures’s goal to create the best, largest, and most persistent pipeline of exceptional talent globally and match it to opportunity to serve others for life. This recognition validates the tremendous work that Farmer and the team has done to ramp up the Last Mile Education Fund in the two years since its founding. Kumar Garg spoke with Farmer and their Q&A is posted on the Schmidt Futures’s website.
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About Last Mile Education Fund
Last Mile Education Fund closes critical gaps in financial and career support for financially vulnerable college students in the “last mile” to graduation in high-demand STEM fields, addressing both economic mobility and the talent crisis in tech and tech-enabled industries. Unlike traditional scholarships, Last Mile takes a broad investment approach, identifying students committed to technology and engineering fields, providing agile, just-in-time support for challenges they face beyond their control, and incubating them to be the next generation of innovators.
About Schmidt Futures
Schmidt Futures is a philanthropic initiative, founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, that bets early on exceptional people making the world better. For more information, visit schmidtfutures.com.